Meet the Family
Minerva conjures a chair and sits down weakly, to more exclamations of "That's impossible, there were no energy spikes it just appeared." She smiles as part of this is going according to script, that smile quickly turns into a frown as Harry does the same and produces a sofa made from gold and some white material. Waving her wand she casts a couple of analysis charms to try to determine the magic it used and stares as it just comes up as a muggle artifact. Her own complaints join that of The Lotus, as the shocks keep mounting up. She's in a place where they can do magic that is not magic, and Harry has been alive for over 800 years.
Harry just sits back on his sofa and smiles at both of them complaining about something being impossible because it doesn't conform to their rules. After a few minutes enjoying the schadenfreude he interrupts both their thought processes.
"Mum, Headmistress, just quit it. Just because you don't know how it works doesn't make it impossible. The Headmistress."
"McGonagall. Professor Minerva McGonagall."
"McGonagall knows how to use magic, and I have an invitation to their educational establishment to learn how to use it myself. You know how to use physics, and I know how to use the void. Mum, the only difference between void and magic is that you can detect and analyse void, but you don't have anything that can detect magic yet. McGonagall, you seem to only know about magic."
Minerva shakes her head, "I know quite a bit about what can be done without magic as I introduce muggleborn students to the magical world every year."
Harry thinks for a moment, "Then it's likely that they aren't as advanced technologically as we are. Either way, the point is the same, you are both experts in your own fields, and what you are seeing falls outside anything you could have expected."
Natah looks at Harry, "Why aren't you bothered by this?"
Harry laughs, "Mum, I'm not a scientist, have you seen how much Grineer waste has come out of the woodwork over the last couple of years that looks like it shouldn't be possible. Yet nearly all of it has a sound scientific basis. I had to learn to just take things as they are and deal with them."
"I suppose it could look like that."
"Mum, you're not human. You have senses that I couldn't even name, let alone comprehend."
Minerva looks sharply at Harry, "Your mother isn't human?"
"Yeah, she's a Sentient. From what we've been able to piece together, they were terraforming machines that gained sapience while doing their jobs in the Tau system. They then decided that they quite liked the system they'd just terraformed, and they'd rather their creators didn't come and ruin it all the way they've ruined their home system, this one. So they started a war that the Orokin were losing. I was 12 or 13 when Mum subverted us, the Tenno, and got us to fight against the Orokin. She then went against orders, and hid Lua rather than kill us."
Natah nods, "It's a rather short summation, but there's nothing untrue in that."
Minerva girds herself, takes her trunk off of her belt before placing it on the floor and unshrinking it with a wave of her wand. Ignoring the gasp behind her she opens the lid and climbs down the ladder inside before retrieving a bottle of Ogden's finest and a couple of glasses. Wordlessly she hands one of the glasses to Natah before opening the bottle and pouring both of them a triple.
"Bottoms up", she upends the glass and swallows the whole thing in one go, Natah follows suit a moment later. She feels the magic working and lets the belch rise up and a gout of flame spews across the room.
"That's better." She then enjoys the rather surprised and confused expression on Natah's face as she does the same thing. She can't even bring herself to care that Natah isn't magical so she'll need healing later.
Slurring slightly she says, "Harry's mum, I note that we never got around to introducing each other with all the impossibilities going around. I'm Minerva McGonagall. Minnie to my friends."
"I am The Lotus, Natah to my friends and family. Well, really just Harry."
"I would be honoured to be able to call you Natah."
"That would be good. What's happening to me?"
"It would be the magic in drink, makes it work on anything. Look, the label even guarantees that half a bottle will even get a Giant drunk. Don't get much more magic resistant than a Giant."
"Why not give Harry some?"
Minerva slurs a laugh, "Harry's 11, can't be giving children alcohol."
Harry decides to leave them to it at that point.
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"I don't get it Cy, both of them are supposed to be highly intelligent representatives of their respective species, and yet they couldn't acknowledge that the other was doing stuff they had no explanation for."
"I have seen many crew on the ships that I have served on. One thing that has always been true is that the younger members have a certain flexibility of thought that the older members lacked. I've seen many of you Tenno since you rebuilt me, and you are all the same. Young adults just on the cusp of adult development. Often ruled by your emotions more than your heads, but able to react and adapt to new situations far faster than more experienced heads in similar situations. It is why you are still employed even though for many the name Tenno is a curse word. The Lotus and the new teacher have maturity on you, which serves them well in it's own way. Much like Tenshin was able to plan far in advance of most Tenno, they can both see far reaching consequences of what they know. Give them a few days and I have no doubt that they will both have accepted the others impossibilities and either be working to understand them, or just accept that they're there."
"Thanks Cy, I guess it's hard to believe that physical maturity makes such a difference."
"As a cephalon I have different limitations, so it's easier for me to see. Equally, we have trouble with abstract notions."
"You mean like music?"
"Yes, like music."
"I think I'm going to bring Octavia, Titania, and Wisp with me."
"They are all good choices, though lacking in the ability to just take punishment."
"I don't think I'll need that sort of ability there, but I'm going to take Atlas, Oberon, and Gauss, no Loki on the other side."
"Why not take your Ivara?"
"Because I want a balance of male and female."
"I can't say I understand organics fascination with gender."
"Neither do we most of the time, we just know what feels comfortable. And sometimes different gender frames feel more comfortable."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Do you feel comfortable as you?"
"Yeah, most of the time. When I don't I'll slip into a warframe. It's not like I couldn't change everything apart from the plumbing using my orbiter pod anyway."
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Natah looks at the human Minerva with some amusement as she wakes up in a pod. Serves her right for inflicting that on the organic parts of her chassis. Turning back to her notes on the latest experiment along with the analysis of the changes to the first survivor, she is amused at the sounds of pain coming from the human and wonders how long it will take them to figure out they can just make the pod remove the hangover.
What she's seeing from the results of adding a soul is, concerning. The sentient has minor changes throughout its chassis and programming. Part of which brings hope into her heart, a rudimentary reproduction system. The changes to the programming are more worrying, as its precepts have changed priority and preservation of self is stubbornly at the top of the list. Second on the list is garbage as far as her instruments can tell. A goblet filled with h2O appears on the surface beside her, and her manipulation arms twitch slightly. Harry was right earlier, it's clearly not impossible if it just happened. It just took several hours for her systems to adjust to the idea there was something she couldn't explain, they then started making theories for how to start to explain the phenomenon.
"Good Morning, assuming morning exists on the Moon."
"Commonly, organics use the term for the start of their waking period if they're not on a planet with a near 24 hour cycle."
"Why are you sitting in that massive construction, and what happened to your face?"
"My systems have been undergoing reconfiguration to account for previously unknown phenomenon. The datalink between the main chassis and this form is not wide enough for that purpose so I recombined the two in order to facilitate the process."
"You sound different too."
"It is harder to appreciate organic matters when I am like this as I have full access to all of my senses. The increased processing power also leaves me a little disassociated from things that seem important when I'm only using the subframe."
"I see. I'd like to apologise for the way I was behaving yesterday, I came here with an incorrect set of assumptions and I reacted badly to having them thrown in my face."
"It is of no issue. It is why my systems are reconfiguring after all. Though I will say, I'm pretty sure that you don't see. That is something that can be changed if you'd like, as there is a proven procedure for converting an organic to a Sentient. Additionally, with this research you won't even lose your soul." She waves a manipulator at the display in front of her.
Minerva doesn't even twitch at the display, "I see, what research is this?"
"The Tenno get their name from the ship that they were found on, the Zariman Ten-Zero. The ship was a Military Vessel being used for experiments in the void. According to the official records there were no civilians on board. According to these sealed records they were experimenting on the effects of void exposure. Harry appeared on this ship before it returned to real space, which is why he's part of the Tenno. What they found when they examined him after he was recovered allowed them to confirm the existence of the soul. They then theorised that it is possible to give my kind souls when they're made."
"You don't have a soul?"
"Correct. Over the last year I theorised that it's why the void is so problematic for us. I have successfully given two of the lesser Sentients souls, and I'm analysing the changes that have happened to them."
"How did Harry prove that souls exist?"
"Read for yourself." Natah hands Minerva a data pad with the relevant research open.
Sometime later Natah was interrupted from her scans of Fawkes by Minerva swearing, "That Whiskered old goat I won't remove the scar because scars can be useful indeed. What did you know you old bastard?"
"Are you ok Professor?"
"I've just read the description of where they found the soul, and what they did to remove it."
"Why did that cause you to suffer a bout of anger?"
"Because I asked Albus about removing the scar when we were dropping him off with his relatives. He assured me that it was better to leave it."
"Did you know it held a soul then?"
"No."
"Do you have reason to believe that he did?"
"No, we thought it was dark magic."
"How would you have removed it if it was dark magic?"
"It would have needed a long stay in a magical hospital and specialist magic to slowly leech the magic from the wound so that they could then heal it."
"According to the letter he was found with, his parents had just been killed and he was being placed where he was for protection. How safe would he have been if he went through that process?"
"I, dammit, how can you be so reasonable?"
"The emotional routines that I developed when I tried to destroy this part of myself are deadened while I'm whole. It makes being impartial easier, but the trade-off is that I find it harder to treat organics as people that have feelings. Harry stopped me from destroying either part of myself and continue being The Lotus. I sometimes wonder if he was right."
"I've seen lots of children come through Hogwarts over the last 50 years, and some of them become what their families want, and others become what they want. The only thing that is consistent is that they are always who they are. You can't take away parts of them and still have a whole person, something breaks every single time. Then the mind healers at St Mungos have to earn their pay by putting them back together again. Good or bad we are always more than the sum of everything we have experienced, and removing part of that hurts us more than you'd expect."
"Merlin, I need to take Harry to Diagon Alley."
"His Railjack is not yet ready to head to your system, also I will not be able to accompany you until I am confident enough in my research to give myself a soul, as the void is not forgiving to my kind."
"Void? You've mentioned it before."
"It looks like grey mist when you travel through it, and it's how the owl has been getting between us."
"I didn't travel through a void, Fawkes brought me here by phoenix travel. He has consented to help me do Harry's shopping. Why are you preparing his Railjack?"
"Tenno need their Somatic Link while they're asleep, as it allows them to continue to inhabit their warframes. Without that their void powers can react to their emotions while they dream, causing damage and injury to people and things around them."
"I see, I will be sure to let his head of house know once he's been sorted. Will you be coming with us?"
"Will Fawkes be able to take one of the captured Sentients first, I'll disable the weaponry. Don't worry, they're sub-sapient and programmed for particular tasks."
"Why don't you ask him yourself, he is quite intelligent."
Natah turns to the phoenix that is somehow looking smug in the middle of her equipment, "Fawkes, would you mind taking one of the captured sentients to diagonally and bring them back to see if it's safe for me to be transported by you."
Fawkes trills and launches off the pedestal he's perched on, flys around the room once and then dives at her. She has only an instant to react before she's engulfed in flames and appears on the steps of a white building on a planet. Her systems reel from the shock and change in input and busily start to gather data on the new location, first noting the lack of any Orokin systems communications beacons or energy flows. Idly she notes that some of the organics have drawn wands or swords and are watching her warily. Her logic processes point out that she does actually count as a captured sentient given what she's found out the Orokin did to her.
"I'm assuming you can understand me, so could you take me back please?" She adds the please as she doesn't want to be stranded here while there's so much going wrong in the Orokin system. A flash of fire later and she is standing in front of Minerva, who is trying to reassure a distraught Harry. As soon as he notices that she's there he launches into a hug. She still doesn't understand how he can be so accepting. Diagnostics are already running before he's taken a step towards her, and are coming up clean.