chapter:10 Marietta motioned

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Harry considered it. Astronomy wasn't his favourite class, but it was far ahead of Divination — easy grade or not! He was decent at it; he knew all eighty-eight constellations and the secondary stars in them. He couldn't always recognise a star by the looks of it, though Hermione could. "Yeah, I think I could," he said thoughtfully. "At least on Earth, I could," he qualified. "Out here," he waved his hand languidly, "there are just so many more stars to see, it's hard to recognize the patterns."

"Can't see the forest for the trees," murmured Luna. She sighed. "Astronomy doesn't make much sense as a course," Luna said thoughtfully. "Astrology does, but that's Divination. Astronomy is just stars and celestial objects and planetary mechanics. And there aren't really . . . any occupations that use it, either. Yet it's taught the full seven years. As a required course."

She turned to look at him, tilted her head slightly, smiling, and said, "Isn't that interesting?"

"It is, it really is," Harry agreed thoughtfully.

She turned back to the stars, nodding happily. "It's that way in every magical school, you know," she said. "All of them start out with Astronomy in the first year. Do you think they're hoping we'll spot a space nargle?"

"Huh," Harry said. "You know what?"

She looked at him curiously.

"We should bring telescopes here."

"Stellar idea," Luna agreed.

He frowned at her. Had she just made a joke?

Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe had been thinking about stars and astronomy, also, Harry and Luna discovered at the next D.A. session. Which was held in one of the larger rooms rather than risk damage to the bridge. Or the seating area in front of the windows. Plus, it didn't have any of those pedestal things for them to accidentally damage, set-off, or crash into.

"And we're pretty much sure we're here," Cho announced finally with triumph, pointing at a place on one of the star charts they had brought. The scrolls of calculations were stuck to the walls for the rest to examine. "Or the spaceship is anyway."

Harry tried to hide his blush as she looked at him, smiling broadly.

"The asteroid belt?" Lee said, and nodded. "Makes sense, there's an asteroid nearby, after all."

"How did you figure this out?" Fred asked.

"Locating the constellations out the windows on all sides, and comparing them to what we see from Earth. Then locating which constellation Astronomy class said Saturn was in. And then Jupiter. Which led us to locating," Marietta motioned at a nearby window, "Earth from the ship, and that gave us a pretty accurate distance."

"Where are all the asteroids, then," Dennis Creevey piped up, "if this is the asteroid belt?"

Hermione shook her head. "The asteroid belt is pretty sparse," she explained, "nothing like what they make it look like on the telly. The average distance between objects is around twenty-four times the circumference of the Earth. It's a surprise we can see even one asteroid from here, really." She tisked. "If there were as many asteroids as the movies show, you'd be able to see the asteroid ring from Earth with your own eyes, like Saturn's rings — no telescope needed."

"That's a pretty impressive amount of work," Fred said approvingly, "If you ignore that the whole place isn't even real," George tapped a finger on Cho's and Marietta's navigational chart.

Harry had taken to naming the first twin to speak as Fred, in his mind. That made the other George.

Lee rolled his eyes. "Prat. Still, pretty cool that we have an actual location for where the Room placed us."

"Is anyone trying to fix the ship?" someone asked. "Does anyone know what's wrong with it? It would be so wicked if we could fly around. I mean, the asteroid belt! Aren't there like dwarf planets here?"

"Only one — Ceres. Then a few really big asteroids, and thousands of smaller ones," Hermione said.

"Still . . .."

Lee shrugged. "Don't know what's wrong with the power situation, yet." Lee said thoughtfully. "Best we can tell is that we're out of power, broken, or just . . . turned off and we haven't figured out how to turn it back on."

George apparently couldn't help himself; he had to add, "Then there's the whole thing that, you know, it was created by the Room of Requirement and it probably never had power in the first place." He was promptly booed by everyone except his twin.

"Well, if it is a magical construct," Fred said thoughtfully, ignoring how someone hexed his twin.

"Maybe magic can power it? Somehow?" George said, rubbing his still tingling arm.

"Possibly, possibly," Lee agreed, nodding.

Harry shook his head at the silliness and stood up. He couldn't exactly deny he was curious, but the whole spaceship situation was a distraction from the D.A.'s purpose. An interesting distraction, admittedly, but a distraction, nonetheless. "It's getting late," he said. "It's almost curfew. If we don't stop now, no one will get back to their common rooms in time. And we can't depend on luck to keep from getting caught . . . yes, I know, we have those spells, but someone's going to notice you aren't in the common rooms or your rooms when you should be, before curfew. So, how about we call it quits for tonight?"

There were some groans and moans. Someone actually asked, "Do we have to, Professor," which made lot of people snicker.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm the only teacher in Hogwarts who has to kick his students out, I swear," he muttered, shaking his head. "Keep it up," he said louder, "and I'll give you all assignments for the next class."

Everyone paused on their way to the door and looked at him expectantly. Several took out quills and notebooks — even Hermione.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" He rolled his eyes and sighed resignedly. "Well, okay then. Ten inches on magical fuels, power systems, or engines, if you know anything about them. If not, then . . . general theories on getting the ship powered."

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