Corrispondence
Minerva skids to a halt by the gargoyle and almost collapses from the pain in her thigh. She should have taken it more easily until the muscle recovered on its own. But needs must, and talking about needs.
"Move, unless you want to be a bunny rabbit for the next school year. I have urgent news for the headmaster."
The gargoyle that guards the Headmasters office looks reprovingly at her, but does reluctantly step to one side. Limping up the stairs she pushes open the door to his office without fanfare.
Albus looks up from his own paperwork with some surprise, "Minerva, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"It's Harry, he's replied to his letter. Though it seems a little odd."
Albus' gaze sharpens, "Odd how?"
"It's like he never learnt English. Here, see for yourself."
She hands over both copies of the letter and waits silently while he reads the letter multiple times. She swears that she can see his hand reach for a quill in order to correct the grammar or word choice, even though there's only a few lines to it. Eventually he puts the letter on his desk before removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes.
"Well?"
"He is 11, and interested in coming. Talk to Aurora and see if she can make heads or tails of this. While you're doing that I'll draft a response. I wonder why he referred to you by your title and not your name."
Pulling his wand he duplicates the letter, then frowns when the copy doesn't have any writing on it. Instead it has black smudges where the text should be. Fixing the image in his mind, he casts the duplication spell again, with the same result. With a sigh he assumes that there's some sort of copy protection on the letter, so he pulls out a sheet of parchment and spells a quill to transcribe the letter onto the new parchment. Once she has the copy, Minerva goes off to find the Astronomy teacher to see if she can shed any light on those numbers.
Once he's alone, Albus casts some detection spells on the letter, trying to find out why he couldn't copy it. Much to his frustration, the letter shows no signs of magic. It also shows no sign of ink either. Even his alchemy spells say that it is a uniform sheet of material with no deviations within standard tolerances1.
Unfortunately, Aurora doesn't know what the numbers at the bottom of the letter mean. As such, over the rest of the day they draft a letter back to Harry trying to describe calendar. It's over breakfast that Aurora hears them bickering, and comes up with the suggestion that they end up going with. Include a calendar with each day clearly marked, and the summer and winter solstice indicated. They should also indicate when they received his letter, and when they sent the reply.
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It's almost 3 months later, and Harry is in the process of culling the Grineer Ghouls in the middle of Africa when out of nowhere an owl appears and tries to land on his Mesa frame. That lasts all of a couple of seconds before one of the ghouls tries to eat it, and with a disgruntled squark, it takes off. Unfortunately for Harry and the Owl, there's a Dargyn skiff keeping an eye on the fight, looking to take an opportunistic shot at Harry if he disengages. As soon as it finishes it's identification scan of the avian, and comes up with unknown, it's reported up the chain. Much to Harry's disgust, this means that his current location becomes the most coveted vacationing spot for every Grineer within short range radio link. It gets so bad that Harry eventually posts an urgent help bounty using his own carefully hoarded platinum. With the distraction caused by his fellow Tenno, and the onset of night and the sentient fragments rising from the depths, he is finally able to exfiltrate with the owl not only alive, but also intact.
Once behind the Orokin era walls of Cetus, Harry transfers out of his warframe and allows the owl to land on his shoulder.
"Hello there, you've been gone a while. Come on, as we're planetside, let's see Master Teasonai and see if he has any treats that are safe for you to eat."
Walking through the village is an interesting experience, as it seems like everyone wants to look at the owl. Eventually he is able to make his way to see Teasonai, who upon seeing the owl immediately stop talking to his current customer.
"Tenno, what a pleasure. And this fine specimen of a bird, where did you find it?"
"It's an owl, and I didn't find it, it found me. They're apparently used for carrying letters, as you can see."
"Is that what that is, how odd. How do you read it?"
"They've applied a substance to the surface of the animal skin." Harry removes the letter and unfolds it to show the proof.
"That seems widely wasteful, there are so many better things that the components of that letter could be used for."
"Tell me about it, they have an educational establishment that they've invited me to. I'm seriously thinking of going just to find out how they can afford to be so wasteful. Anyway, enough about my mail, can you examine the owl and let me know if there's anything I need to do to care for it properly."
"Hmm, if you'll allow me to look after it for an hour I'll give it a full diagnostic."
An hour later, and a cryptic message from the Quills contact Onkko, Harry returns to see how the owl is getting on.
"Absolutely amazing, the owl shares a lot of similarities with the local wildlife. Which, apart from the insects, seems to have come from a different evolutionary tree to everything else in the solar system. The only animals that seem to share the same evolutionary tree as us are kubrow and kavats of course."
"Um, yeah, there's a pretty good reason for that. However, I'm not really at liberty to talk about it."
"No, no I understand. You Tenno come across secrets all the time, and you trade on your reputation."
"Look, New Loka might have more information if you can sweet talk them."
"Those crazies? I doubt anyone from Cetus could step one foot inside one of their compounds without having weapons pointed at them. If my curiosity becomes bad enough I will send one of my apprentices. Anyway, your, owl was it? Yes, owl. It had some parasites living in it's feathers. We have extracted them and are keeping them for study. It also had no antibodies for any of the illnesses found on the plains. We noticed that it already had some nanites, so we've just reprogrammed them to also act as a second immune system. It should also be safe to transport it the same way you transport your other living companions. Also, you are aware that the harness is made from animal skins?"
"We were, thank you for pointing it out though. I need to get going, as this letter isn't going to translate itself."
"Thank you for allowing me to see such a magnificent specimen of a unique animal that isn't infested."
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Harry makes his way to Lua with the letter, as his lander is coming in to the landing pad he muses that it's almost like having a home. Oh, he has his orbiter and railjack, but they don't have the same feel as working near to his mother. He sometimes wonders whether he'd have been kicked out, like Rell was, if he'd been older when he appeared on the Ten-Zero. Then again, it's probably not fair on the other Tenno, who were all going through puberty when the accident happened. As a result, he had a very different experience with Margulis, and then Natah, than they did. He doesn't remember his parents trying to kill him, though there is that memory of a man shooting a green light. Disembarking, he makes his way down to the Lab and his mothers workspace. As he approaches, her pod opens and she disconnects from the computer network.
"Harry, welcome back."
"Mother, it's good to see you." – He indicates the owl – "We have another letter."
Dear Mr Potter _ Natah
Thank you for your prompt response, we have included a calendar with this letter. On the back our Astronomy Teacher has drawn our solar system as well as a diagram of the tilt of earth. We have marked the day with the most daylight as well as the day with the least. These are the Summer _______ and the Winter ________. We have also marked the date we received your letter, and the date that this letter was sent.
It is currently the 24th July, and we would like to arrange for a teacher to visit on the 31st of July. If possible we would take you to diagonally for your supplies, including an owl for your own correspondence.
Please let me know if the date is suitable for you, and feel free to ask me any questions. I will do my best to answer them.
Yours Sincerely
_________ ___________
Harry's eyebrows furrow as he finishes reading the letter, and looking at the associated calendar and diagram.
"Mum"
"Yes Harry?"
"I think they live on earth."
"What do you mean?"
He takes the back of the calendar over to where she's hooked into the computer systems, "Look, the orbits are slightly off, but all the major bodies of the solar system are there. Though they have an asteroid belt for some reason. Then they've got a satellite that's slightly larger than half the size of Mars, just like Lua. Then there's the axial tilt they're describing."
"I see. It is plausible if the owl is using the void to travel. Though, it would be unique amongst all of the known species, as even Tenno need technological aid to transition into the void proper. If that is the case, we will need to construct a void beacon for your railjack to home in on. I don't think we should construct a solar rail, as we do not want the Corpus or Grineer, let alone the infested, to find their way to their world."
"Could we do a series of beacons, like the ones that lead to the derelicts in the void? I know we've now isolated all of the beacons for them now, but if someone decides to follow me I'd rather have a chance to notice and ditch them before I arrive at an unspoiled planet."
"You would make a good Sentient Harry. Seeking to protect a system from those who would only exploit it."
"Thanks Mum, but I like my limbs organic."
"Of course, I'll be coming with you for the first trip. I'm sure that Teshin, can, take over..." Natah trails off as she remembers that Teshin was killed by her brother.
"I miss him too. It wasn't your fault, you were trapped."
"It's just, he took over when I was lost to myself."
"I'm sure there's a copy of Ordis floating around somewhere, and you could always ask Maroo to interact with the organics. She's pretty much neutral."
Natah laughs, "You've made your point. Now Tenno there is an urgent mission to be taken care of. You need to write a reply while I make a small temporal tracker. I want to know exactly how long it takes for the messages to get there and back. The second stage of your mission is to collect 20,000 navigation coordinates so that we can use the information from the tracker to plot a course."
"Do they need to be new coordinates?"
"No?"
"Oh, goody, here you go."
"No Harry not in here, just send them to me normally."
It takes a few days, but they put together a small tracker that fits unobtrusively inside the harness the owl is wearing. Most of that time is spent working out how to use the Orokin technology to achieve what they want by reading manuals and notes. They also write a letter.
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Just over an hour after she sent the letter, the Owl returns and deposits a new letter to the desk of Minerva McGonagall.
Dear Deputy Headmistress,
We would be delighted to meet the representation of staff. However, as it has already been 3 days since this message received, we request that you send back owl immediately with a note to say what the date is. It is carrying a tracker that calculate a route to your planet should enable us from where we are.
Regards,
Natah (The Lotus), Harry.
Minerva snorts, of course there'd be time magic involved. Well, nothing for it but to reply assuring them that it's not quite the strangest situation she's seen. Granted, there's no topping Xeno Lovegood's visit and walking in on a fairy orgy with a little time magic mixed in. As she recalls, it took five minutes to get in and then drag the underaged Lovegood out. However, 4 days had passed on the outside. Quickly penning a reply, also including the current time and a note that time magic tends to be very localised. So, if they walk at most a mile from their current location they should return to normal time. Letter penned; she attaches it to the owls' leg before sending it off.
1Unknown to him, in the absence of any form of written communication anywhere in the solar system, and the resources needed to make paper or parchment being so valuable for other things, the solution that Harry and Natah eventually came up with, was to produce an organosilicon sheet of material where the letters were just the same molecule in a different alignment, thus changing the way they reflect light. The result of this is that the document is essentially one giant molecule.