Orphanchild

Title: Orphanchild

Author: ExcentrykeMuse

Pairing(s): Spock/Harry Potter

Fandom(s): Nu!Trek/Harry Potter Series

Word Count: 3k

Rating: PG13

Warning(s): the veil, magic, dna sequencing, infidelity, secret children, the fairies, childhood mental bonds, age discrepancy (27/15)

Prompt: for Rebecca is Cool: 1)Harry Potter/Spock. Harry falls through/shoved through the veil and ends up in the future and on another planet where he meets Spock.

Spock was on leave for the week, but it was not long enough to return to Vulcan.  He could, of course, explore Terra, his mother’s home, but there was nowhere in particular he wished to see, and he did not wish to see his mother’s Terran family.  They were all polite, but they watched him out of the corner of their eyes as if waiting for him to do something alien.

Missing the desert heat, Spock decided on Arizona and took a tent so he could enjoy the solitude.  It would be most rewarding to not have to be bombarded by the lust of other cadets. 

It was on his third night, when he was lying on his back and staring up at the big dipper, that he heard a scream and a boy fell beside him on the ground.

Startled, Spock sat up and looked at the sky but saw no ship or shuttle, before turning to the boy.  He reached for the pulse point and felt one hundred and twenty beats per minute and then rolled the boy over.  The boy groaned.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“What—?”  The boy blinked open his bright green eyes and stared at the stars for a long moment before he sat up.  He was wearing what Spock knew to be casual Terran clothing, but they were all torn up and the boy was covered in flecks of blood. 

“You are injured,” Spock realized.  He turned to retrieve his dermal regenerator, the boy had a gash in his neck, when the boy grabbed him and looked at him hard. 

“Where am I?” he breathed, utterly scared.

“Earth,” Spock answered.

The boy looked at him askance.  “Of course I’m on Earth.”

Oh, then he had started on Earth, then.  The boy must be Terran then despite the slight points to his ears and the slant to his eyebrows and the unusual greenness of his eyes.  “This is Arizona.”

“Arizona?” he asked in shock.  “The veil took me to Arizona?”

The Veil must have been the ship he was on.  “It appears so.  Let me retrieve the dermal regenerator.”  He went inside the tent and turned it on, but it only frightened the boy.

“What is that?”

“The dermal regenerator,” Spock told him patiently.  “It will heal the gash on your neck and any other injuries you have received.”

Carefully, he turned it back on and it hummed a bright blue.  The boy stared at it and followed it with his eyes as Spock applied it to his neck and regenerated his skin.  When he was done, the boy put his hand up to his neck and gasp.  “It’s like—magic.”

“Magic does not exist,” Spock told him definitively.  “This is technology.  Where else are you hurt?”

The boy looked at his strangely before lifting up his left pant leg to show another gash.

They were miles away from anyone so Spock determined that they should spend the night in the desert and the next day they would seek out Starfleet to report the boy missing.  “Harry,” the boy told him after he had regenerated the strange lightning bolt scar on his forehead.  “Harrogate Potter.”

He reached out and took Spock’s hand just as he was finishing and asked, breathlessly, “Is it gone?”

Spock could feel a spike of pleasure in his fingertips, but he merely dropped their joint hands to the sand.  “Was it painful?”

“Yes and no.  I’ve had it since I was a toddler.”

“Someone should have regenerated it for you before now,” Spock told him, no hint of emotion in his voice as he finally removed his hand from Harry’s and put the dermal regenerator away.  “No doctor should have let you leave his medical practice without seeing to it.”

“Spock,” Harry began carefully, catching his dark eyes.  “You’re not human, are you?”

This surprised Spock and he looked into Harry’s bright green eyes.  “I would posit the same about you, Harrogate Potter.”

Harry blushed.  “There are rumors that my mother wasn’t my mother.  That my actual mother had creature blood.”  He cleared his throat nervously.  “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Creature blood,” Spock reiterated in confusion. 

“Faye blood, Spock,” Harry told him carefully, reaching out and taking his hand again, which confused Spock.  “Where I come from, there are faye, and unicorns, and veela, and giants, and goblins.”  He breathed out through his nose.  “I think I came to a different place.”

“You fell from the sky,” Spock agreed.  “I didn’t see or hear a ship.”

“I fell through a veil,” Harry told him.  “But you’re not human.”  He looked into Spock’s eyes.  “Are there others like you?”

“An entire planet,” Spock told him carefully.  “I’m the only Vulcan in Starfleet, however.”

Harry took a deep breath.  “And there are other—aliens—here on earth?”

“Yes,” Spock told him simply, looking back down at their hands and wondering if his father would call him promiscuous.  “But there is none of that—where you originate from.”  Spock couldn’t believe that he was actually humoring Harry, but his alien heritage was like nothing Spock had ever seen.  It was Vulcanite in some aspects, and then not in others.  He had also dropped from the skies with injuries that seemed from a recent knife fight.

“No,” Harry told him.  “I mean, we talk about life on other planets, but we have no evidence of life on other—”

Spock leaned in and touched Harry’s slightly pointed ear, and Harry stilled.  Removing his hand just as quickly, Spock’s apologies were on his lips, but Harry quickly grabbed Spock’s other hand and pressed it back up against his ear.

“You can touch it if you want,” Harry told him.  “I don’t mind.”

So Spock touched it.  It wasn’t pointy like a Vulcan ear, but it did come up to a rounded point.  It was smooth and slightly silky under his hands and Spock traced the earlobe down until his hand dropped onto the sand.

“This is what we will do,” Spock decided.  “You have been living in an anti-technology enclave, but you were expelled when it was discovered you had Vulcan heritage.”

“How are you going to prove that?”

“Your ears,” Spock explained.  “They’re not the same, but they’re close enough.  You must say that you always kept your ears hidden, but your hair got cut—”

“But I’m not like you,” Harry tried to explain.  “I can’t become emotionless like you are.”

Spock wouldn’t pretend that he didn’t hear his own mother’s regrets in Harry’s words, but he squeezed Harry’s hands.  “We are taught.  It is not an unlearnable skill.  How many years have you, Harrogate Potter?”

“Fifteen.”

Spock himself was twenty-seven standard years.

Carefully, Spock regarded Harry.  “You are not bound in marriage by the rites of your people, Harrogate Potter?”

The question startled Harry.  “No.  We can’t legally marry until we’re seventeen…”. He seemed a little lost.  “My parents were eighteen.”

“Is this the way of the Faye?” Spock questioned, wondering if Harry was speaking of his human parents.

“No,” Harry answered.  “I don’t know the ways of the Faye.  They say that at the full moon, the faye entice virgins to go dancing beneath the moon and seduce them, stealing their children, but that can’t be true.  My mother would have been a faye.”  He blinked his big green eyes at Spock. 

“Do they have bonds?”

“Bonds?”

“Vulcans have mental bonds.  They are placed within our minds when we are children and then solidified when we marry as adults.”  He thought of his own failed bond with T’Pring.  He thought of how his father did not have a bond with his Terran mother.  “I wonder if you are capable.  The adepts will wish to see.”

Harry’s hand slipped out of Spock’s, and Spock felt the loss of it.  “You—you have a girlfriend?”

“Negative,” Spock answered, “to enter into such a casual arrangement—”

“No,” Harry interrupted.  He indicated his head.  “You have a bond in your head.”

Spock immediately understood the problem.  “Negative,” he told Harry.  “I rejected the bond my father arranged for me.  I am half Terran and, perhaps for that reason, I have held the belief that I should like to find my own mate.”

Harry’s face lit up slightly.  “Oh?”

“Indeed,” Spock agreed.

Shortly after that they settled into the tent for the night.  Harry only had his ripped clothing so Spock gave him his spare set, which was rather large on him.  They only had the one sleeping bag, but Harry rested his head on Spock’s chest, remarking that his heart was quiet, before slipping off into slumber.  Spock should have meditated about the events of the day, but he instead lay in the sleeping back, running his hands through Harry’s hair, wondering at this boy who appeared to have traveled dimensions and knowing he would do anything to protect him.

Harry was adorable when he woke up.  He did it in stages.  First a twitch, then a nudge, then a hand coming to crinkle his ear, then a turn over the pillow.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Harry said with wonder when he saw Spock on the other side of the small tent, packing their provisions. 

“No,” Spock told him.  “It wasn’t a dream.”

The hike to basecamp was five hours, but then Spock was able to requisition a shuttle and they were soon off to San Francisco.  Harry loved looking at all the buttons, and Spock even let him pilot for a short amount of time.

They immediately went to the Vulcan Embassy.  If they were going to pass Harry off as Vulcan, they wouldn’t go to Starfleet.  Spock was careful to explain to Harry how they couldn’t hold hands because it was a sign of private intimacy between husband and wife on Vulcan and was unseemly in public. 

“I don’t understand,” Harry told him as they walked up to the embassy.

“Touching fingers is the equivalent of kissing,” Spock told him, causing Harry to go red in the face.

He was able to get an appointment with a junior ambassador who looked at Harry with great interest.  “You lived in an anti-technology enclave?”

“Yes,” Harry told him.  “I was scared when Spock used a dermal regenerator on me.”

“And they left you in the desert when they learnt you had—what we presume is—Vulcan heritage.”

“You can see it in his features,” Spock explained, indicating Harry’s eyebrows and then turning his head to show his ears.  “With a simple haircut, Harrogate Potter was discovered as being the product of a Vulcan-Terran liaison.”

“I quite take your point,” the junior ambassador agreed.  “It is curious that his eyes are so green.  I’ve never seen the like on Terra.”

“I have my mother’s eyes,” Harry explained, clearly referencing his faye mother.

“Indeed,” the junior ambassador thought aloud.  “Thank you, Spock, for bringing Harrogate to our attention.  He will receive the rightful education of the Vulcan people.”

Spock hesitated.  “I should like to take responsibility of him, as my tel-tor kelatu.”

If a Vulcan could show surprise, then the junior ambassador surely would have.  “Do you have your clan’s permission?”

“We immediately came here from Arizona.  I seek their permission next.”

Harry was looking between them in curiosity.  “What is a tel-tor keel—”

“Kelatu,” Spock pronounced for him.

“You would end your line, Spock, son of Sarek, with another half-Vulcan?”

“It is true that Harry and I could not have children—”

“—I can have children.”

Silence enveloped the room as both the junior ambassador and Spock stared at Harry.

“You never asked,” he said by way of explanation, clearly trying to look small in his seat. 

“Harrogate Potter needs to see a healer and an adept immediately,” the junior ambassador decreed, “before anything else can happen.”

Spock nodded.  “I shall go to my residence and speak to the matriarch of my clan.   I shall return at 1900 to take Harrogate Potter to dinner.”

Harry looked excited at that. 

Turning to Harry, Spock explained, “These are your people.  They are here to help you, although they are unknown to you.  If you are confused, ask questions.  I know this is strange to you, Harrogate Potter.”  He then left Harry to the junior ambassador and the ministration of the embassy.

The first thing Spock did when he got back to his dorm room, which he shared with a rather smelly Terran, was take a shower.  He put in a request to speak to the Matriarch of his clan, but it was his Father whose face appeared on the screen.

“Samehk,” Spock greeted.  “I was expecting the Matriarch.”

“And she will surely wish to speak to you when Harrogate’s medical results are back.  He claims he can produce children.”

“It surprised me, too.”

“It is another reason for an anti-technology enclave to expel him,” Sarek mused.  “They do not like differences in any form.  Young Harrogate has most likely had a difficult life.—That, however, comes to the reason for my call.  Are you certain you wish to do this, Spock?  You are already different.”

“Affirmative.”

“A husband of such difference—”

“Affirmative.”

“And yet you would still take him as a bonded mate?”

“Mother once spoke of the Terran concept of fate.  I think it was fate that I was in the correct part of the Arizona desert and that I found Harrogate.”

“Fate is merely a Terran construct.”

“Perhaps,” Spock allowed.  “Still, I believe Mother would say that our meeting was this ‘fate.’”  He paused.  “We have known for years that I would choose my own bonded mate.”

“That is correct.”

“One of Terran heritage does not seem incongruous with my own biological markers.” 

His father’s stern dark eyes looked out at him from the screen.  “If that is what you want.  I would ask you not to pretend it is a logical choice.”

“I do not pretend logic,” Spock agreed.

The holoconference was ended soon after that and Spock was glad that his roommate was out of San Francisco for leave.  It made his own restlessness easier to handle if he did not have to hide it.  After getting dressed in his cadet regulations, he returned to the embassy, to find Harry’s gene sequencing on display in the junior ambassador’s office.

“He is Vulcan, then,” Spock surmised as he looked it over.

“Yes,” the junior ambassador agreed.  “Here and—here.  There is another sequence disrupting it that is non-Terran, but Harrogate is well over forty-three percent Vulcan.”

“I am much gratified to hear it,” and Spock was.  It was one thing to trick another Vulcan with visual evidence, it was another with DNA evidence. 

“It is fascinating that our genes were able to procreate with Terran genes unassisted by science,” the junior ambassador continued, focusing in on the anomalous genes.  “We are running a study on the genetics now to determine the seventeen percent we cannot account for.”

Spock would posit that they would be the faye genes, Harry had spoken of.

Harry came into the room not ten minutes later, wearing the black robes of a Vulcan student, his hair cut into a neat length around his head, not entirely Vulcan, but not as messy as before.

“Now we can certainly see your ears,” Spock teased.

Harry touched them self-consciously.  “I’ve always had them,” he reminded Spock.

“And they look well on you, ashayam.”

Harry looked up at the strange word.

The junior ambassador made his presence known.  “Until the matriarch of your clan agrees to a bond and until such time as a bond is placed, Harrogate will remain at the embassy unless he is sent to Vulcan for his further education.”

“I do not wish for Harrogate—”

“You may not have a say if your matriarch declines the match.”  The junior ambassador looked over at Harry carefully.  “Remember, Harrogate, sit tall and don’t fidget.”

Telling someone who had lived as a Terran his entire lifetime was like telling a toddler not to fidget. 

“He is unused to our ways—”

“Harrogate must begin to learn.—Now, Harrogate.  What is your father’s name?”

Harry looked momentarily confused.  “Er—James Potter.”

“Harrogate, son of James.  A fine name for a Vulcan,” the junior ambassador pronounced, “although strictly Terran in origin.—You say your father may not have been your father, however.”

“No,” Harry agreed, remembering the lie and sitting forward.  To have Vulcan genes that were hidden, it would make sense if his mother had an affair with a Vulcan before entering an anti-technology enclave.  “I don’t know who my father is.”

“You would not grant him the status of orphan.”

“It would seem that we must,” the junior ambassador decided.  “Harrogate’s Terran father was not his father.”

They were allowed to go after that.  Harry had been given provisional status at the embassy, his new status reading Harrogate orphanchild, which bothered Spock more than he liked to admit. 

He took Harry to a popular Italian restaurant as he knew that Terrans liked such foods and there were many vegetarian options.  Harry happily ate his pasta and chattered away about the DNA sequencing machine and the new room they had given him.  He started Vulcan language classes the next day along with meditation techniques.  Spock knew he couldn’t be in better hands.

He tucked Harry’s hand into his when they were waiting for the check, hidden under the table, and Harry’s bright green eyes shone brightly as he looked at Spock.

“Are we engaged?”

“Soon we will be engaged, ashayam,” Spock promised.  “Your magic brought you to me, I think.  It is the only explanation.”

“So you believe in magic now?”

“Only where you are concerned,” Spock admitted.  “Only where you are concerned, ashayam.”

The End.