Harry Potter and the First Ones

Additional disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Babylon 5.

Author's Note: Since Fiction Alley had a glitch and lost Chapter 3, I thought I would try to reward my readers with a new chapter early.

Departure

"It was the year of fire...the year of destruction...the year we took back what was ours. It was the year of rebirth...the year of great sadness...the year of pain...and the year of joy. It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed. The year is 2261. The place: Babylon 5."

-- Introduction to Babylon 5 Season 4

Harry awoke to a light touch on his chest. He was instantly alert and sat up quickly. As he had been the last to be put to sleep, he saw that he was also the last to be brought back. Almost immediately, Harry noticed that Sheridan was sitting up. His wounds were mostly healed, and he had a light blanket wrapped around him.

"Captain Sheridan!" Hermione exclaimed. "Er...how are you?" The captain tossed her a sardonic look.

"I've just come back from the dead," he answered dryly. "How should I be?"

"You actually died?" Harry wanted to know.

"It was necessary for him to cross over before I could help him," Lorien explained. "I was able to transfer some of my life force to him, but only after he let go of the thread connecting him to the life he had."

"Well, we've all come close to dying," Ron put in. "How many times have you been nearly killed, Harry?"

Harry considered the question. Voldemort had tried to kill him as a baby, then again during the Sorcerer's Stone incident, the basilisk nearly got him in the Chamber of Secrets, and there had been the duel after the Triwizard Tournament. He wasn't sure if he could count last year's fiasco in the Department of Mysteries.

"At least four," he decided at last. "If you don't count rogue bludgers, the Whomping Willow, or random Death Eater attacks." Sheridan stared at him.

"You have had an interesting life, haven't you?" Sheridan commented.

"I believe there is a Chinese curse that wishes you an interesting life," Ginny responded, speaking for the first time.

"None of us have really died, though," Hermione broke in.

"But Voldemort should have," Harry said grimly. "Nobody seems to understand why he didn't."

"Do you remember anything about it?" Ron asked Sheridan.

"Not really. I just remember Lorien asking me some questions, and needing to find something to live for. Then I woke up here."

"I take it you found something, then?" Ginny asked in a manner that suggested she didn't really expect an answer. Hermione, however, was curious.

"What was it?" she inquired eagerly. "Winning the war? Telling everyone what you've learned about the Shadows?" Sheridan shook his head.

"Delenn," he and Harry said at the same time. Sheridan looked up sharply and met Harry's gaze. He didn't speak, but something passed between them, and the captain nodded solemnly. Harry looked away to find that his friends were all staring at him. He blushed in embarrassment but said nothing to answer the questions in their eyes.

"We can leave now, can't we?" Harry asked, to change the subject. "Go back to Babylon 5?"

"There is nothing to prevent us," Lorien answered him.

"How do we get out of here?" Ron wondered.

"I have a ship," Lorien replied calmly. Now it was his turn to receive the stares of Harry and his companions. "I'm not a prisoner here. I come and go as I please."

"Do you think you're ready?" Hermione turned to the captain with concern.

"I think so," he said, standing up slowly. "I'm a little stiff, but I'll live." Then he seemed to realize what he'd said and smiled ruefully.

"You're going to cause quite a stir when you get back, you know," Lorien commented.

"I know. 'No one returns from Z'Ha'Dum,'" Sheridan recited with the air of a man who has heard a phrase at least once too often.

Lorien led them through winding tunnels until they reached a vast cavern. In the middle of it sat what Harry assumed was Lorien's ship. It looked kind of like a large, flat fish, with fins sticking straight out to either side. Even in the gloom, the vessel's colors seemed to shift through a rainbow of hues, defying the eye's ability to define them. The alien pressed some invisible controls on the side, causing a door to open and a ramp to extend to it.

"Wow, it's like Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Hermione murmured in awe. Harry glanced at her, amused.

"I never would have guessed you for a science fiction fan," he teased her.

"I like a wide variety of things," she sniffed in response. "Besides, I think everyone's seen that film." Then, seeing the perplexed expressions Ron and Ginny were wearing, she amended, "Well, all Muggles, anyway."

"Muggles?" Sheridan asked for clarification, eyebrow raised.

"Non-magic folk," Ginny explained. "It's just what we call people who can't do magic."

"Except if they were born to magic parents," Ron put in. "Then they're Squibs."

"People like me, in other words," Sheridan said. "What telepaths would call 'normals.'"

"I suppose," Hermione answered. "It isn't meant to be derogatory, really. I mean, my parents are Muggles."

"Well, I guess most people wouldn't mind being called normal, either," Sheridan commented. "It's just the way some of them say it."

Sheridan's brow was furrowed, and his mouth was set in a hard line. Clearly, there was some history here that Harry and the others were not aware of. They didn't know much about telepaths, and they'd only met the one Sheridan himself had called in to test them before. Harry exchanged a glance with the others as they boarded the ship. It was apparent that Lorien had not explained to Sheridan that the four kids were actually the result of a failed telepath experiment. Suddenly, Harry found something incredibly funny. He held the others back for a moment to share it with them.

"I wonder if Malfoy and his kind would be so proud of being 'pureblood' if they knew the truth," he whispered, grinning. Ron and Ginny caught the joke right away, and even Hermione smiled broadly.

"Oh, how I wish I could tell him," she said wistfully. "I can just imagine saying something like, 'Yeah? Well, it just means you have two failed experiments for parents!'"

"Hey!" Ron returned, though he sounded good-natured enough. "That's true of me and Ginny, too, you know. Not to mention our brothers."

"Yeah, but you've never been stuck-up about it," Harry pointed out. Then he nudged them back in the direction of the ship. "I think we'd better go."

As they entered the strange vessel, soft lights came up. The inside of the ship was incredible, momentarily displacing any other thoughts. The walls were completely smooth, with no evidence of seams anywhere. A circular area towards the front had an array of completely unintelligible controls. Lorien walked along the perimeter, muttering words in a strange tongue. The walls seemed to respond to what he wanted, forming seats and safety restraints. After everyone was seated for takeoff, Ginny broke the silence.

"We were supposed to be telepaths," she said softly. Captain Sheridan turned to her sharply. In the light of the ship, Harry could see that Sheridan's hair had begun to turn gray. That seemed awfully fast, but he supposed that being dead, even for a short time, could take a lot out of a person. Ginny and Hermione, with occasional interjections from the boys, told him what they had learned about their origins.

"Very interesting," he said when they were finished. "This could be useful information. Can you read minds at all?"

"There are some spells we can use to do it," Harry felt obliged to take up this portion, since he had some experience with Occlumency and Legilimency. "We have to have eye contact, though, and some are better than others at using it. Besides, there are techniques we can learn to protect our minds."

"Really," Sheridan stated thoughtfully, leaning forward in keen interest. "Can you do that? Protect your mind from being read, I mean."

"I've had a little training," Harry admitted. "I'm not very good at it. I don't think I could keep out anyone who really wanted to get in. And it doesn't work at all when I'm asleep."

"Even so, you might be able to resist a passive scan," Sheridan leaned back again, eyes upward as he considered. "Yes, that could be very useful."

Everyone sat in silence for a while as Lorien maneuvered the ship out of the planet and into hyperspace. When the course was set, he came back to speak with the others.

"Have you thought about how you will present yourself on your return?" he addressed Sheridan. "Are we planning to just walk through the front door, so to speak?" Sheridan mulled this over, arms crossed.

"How long have I been gone?"

"More than two weeks, in Earth terms."

Two weeks! Even though Lorien had told them to expect that, Harry was still surprised. To him, it was as though he merely had a good night's sleep, which, admittedly, was unusual enough for him.

"Two weeks!" Sheridan echoed Harry's thoughts. "So they'll think I'm..."

"You were," Lorien reminded him. The captain nodded, conceding the point.

"I have all the codes we need to come through the gate and dock at the station," Sheridan decided. "So we'll be coming in the front door unannounced, with a key. Like we belong there."

"Very good. What are you going to tell them about me?"

"Not much, at least at first. I have to figure out what's going on before I decide on much. Do you have somewhere I could clean up before we get there?"

"Of course." Lorien led Sheridan to another part of the ship, leaving the kids feeling quite left out.

"What are we going to do when we get there?" Hermione fretted. "And how will we explain how we got to Z'Ha'Dum?"

"We aren't," Ginny told her firmly. "This is the captain's show."

"She's right," Ron agreed. "Let him say what he wants. I doubt anyone even knows how we left the last time."

"And Draal didn't really seem to want anyone to know how much he's involved," Harry added.

"Exactly," Ginny said.

"Well, I suppose we are still quite a mystery to everyone there," Hermione conceded.

When Captain Sheridan came back, looking nearly as fit as the first time they'd met him, the teenagers addressed the question of what he wanted them to do when they got back to the station.

"I'd like to keep you close," he mused. "But I don't know whether I'll want to draw attention to you right away."

"You're coming back from the dead with an alien nobody's ever seen," Ron challenged. "Who's going to notice four kids?"

"The three of us are all right," Hermione pointed out, indicating Harry, Ginny, and herself. "We might be able to blend into the background, but you happen to be a six-foot-tall redhead, in case you'd forgotten. Someone's bound to notice you." They had all taken their school robes off and packed them, so their everyday clothing did look fairly ordinary, though it would still not quite match with the fashion of the future.

"She has a point," Sheridan agreed.

"I did bring my invisibility cloak --" Harry began.

"Excuse me, what?" interrupted Sheridan.

"Invisibility cloak," Harry answered, pulling it out of his bag. "It was my father's. It's not large enough to cover all of us, and it will only just do three, especially if Ron's one of them."

Noting that Captain Sheridan seemed disbelieving, Harry realized he would have to demonstrate. Therefore, he obligingly threw the cloak over himself, giving a satisfactory grin when he heard the astonished gasp. He removed it again.

"How does that work?" Sheridan wondered.

"Magic!" all four sorcerers replied in unison. Sheridan rolled his eyes.

"Of course," he said.

"Well, if Ron's the conspicuous one, just have him wear the cloak, and the rest of us will huddle behind these two," Ginny suggested. That seemed like a good plan, at least until they had a better idea of what they would be walking into, so they all agreed to it. Eventually, Hermione broached the subject of why Sheridan had gone there in the first place. The captain told his story, leaving all four teens taking their turn at staring at him, dumfounded.

"So the wife you thought was dead years ago showed up working with the Shadows?" Hermione requested clarification.

"Not exactly," Sheridan corrected. "It was her body, but they had altered her and forcibly put her in one of their ships. They use living beings to interface with them, giving their vessels a kind of intelligence. Once that happens, though, you're never the same. The Anna I loved was gone long ago. She's probably totally dead now. The Whitestar must have dropped almost on top of her."

According to his story, after his meeting with the Shadow representatives (which included Morden, the man they'd seen on Babylon 5 before), Sheridan had tried to run. Out of options, he'd remotely summoned his Whitestar to come crashing down to the planet, loaded with nuclear weapons.

"Well, that explains the big flash we saw," Harry said. "Are we in any danger from the radiation?"

Ron and Ginny were looking at him with identical blank stares.

"You've got to be kidding me!" he fairly shouted. "You don't even know about nuclear bombs?"

"The Cold War?" Hermione supplied. The Weasley siblings shook their heads helplessly.

"The radiation shouldn't be an issue," Lorien offered. "The rock there is very thick and lined with heavy metals that provide considerable shielding."

During the rest of their journey, Captain Sheridan questioned the teen wizards and witches closely, asking about some of the spells they could do and sometimes asking for demonstrations. By the time they went through the jump gate, probably causing something of an uproar at the station, the captain had a shrewd, calculating expression that worried Harry, just a little.

Author's Note: Okay, I got this one done relatively quickly, but don't expect any more for about a month. I have a story on another site that I really want to finish, so I'll be focusing on that. Besides, I'm back to school now, so I may have less time for writing. On the plus side, I'm planning to get in on that new bypass thing, so at least future chapters can get posted sooner after I submit them.