[The Nexus] Chapter 6 - Devola and Popola (II)

Waking up in the morning, Harry was greeted by the sight of Devola and Popola sitting on each side of him, on the edge of the bed, their green eyes watching him unblinkingly.

“Good morning!” the two girls said at the same time when he opened his eyes.

Out of habit, he reached for his nightstand to grab his glasses, only to realise a few moments later that he could see perfectly without them. That made him remember the previous day’s events.

“Good morning,” Harry said as he sat up in his bed. “What are you girls doing here?”

“We were watching you sleep. We’ve never seen a human sleep before,” Popola, the twin with straight hair, said smiling.

That answer made him struggle not to groan. He could tell that he was going to have a very long day ahead of him.

“I see… Um, could you give me some privacy, please?”

“Are we bothering you? Sorry, we didn’t mean to,” the other twin, the one with wavy red hair was quick to apologise.

She looked like a kicked puppy. Harry was torn between feeling sorry for them and exasperated.

“It’s not that. It’s just . . .”

He flushed a bit. He didn’t know how to tell them that most human males woke up in the morning with a certain physiological reaction that they couldn’t control.

“Humans need some time when they wake up. It’s called ‘morning rituals’ when we go to the bathroom, wash our faces, and take a shower, maybe. Stuff like that. It’s embarrassing to let other people see it. Wait for me in the living room, okay? I only need a few minutes.”

⁂

Once he was done with his morning rituals, Harry changed into a new set of clothes and came out.

“What will you do now, Harry?” Devola asked him.

“Usually, I have breakfast at this time. Humans can’t live without food.”

The girls followed him into the kitchen and watched with interest how he took out a roasted duck from a cupboard and started cutting its legs, wings, and other parts before separating them into three portions on three separate plates.

“Is this for us?” Devola asked, her mouth watering.

Unlike humans, Androids did not need to eat. It was not necessary for them. Drinking water was the only thing they required. However, they could eat if they wanted to, and they had taste buds and olfactory receptors too.

“Well, we’re the only people here,” he said in amusement.

“Is it truly okay? I assume your reserves of food are finite,” Popola said.

“I can always go hunt something else. If I were a regular human, I might be worried, but with magic, it’s not difficult to get more food. Maybe we’ll go together later on, and I’ll show you.”

The girls didn’t hesitate any more, and after saying their thanks, they all began to eat. He didn’t know whether it really tasted that good or if they were just blinded by the fact that the food was cooked by a human, but the twins wouldn’t stop telling him how good it was with every bite they took.

‘What should I do with them?’

He didn’t have the heart to chase them out, especially after hearing their story and witnessing how they broke down in front of him.

Knowing it was a heavy subject for them, Harry did not bring it up while they were eating.

Once they were finished and they went back to the living room, he grabbed a few pieces of wood and threw them into the fireplace before lighting them on fire with a spell.

It was November now, and his cabin was somewhere in the Alps, in Switzerland. It was winter outside.

Unexpectedly, the girls came to warm themselves up in front of the fire too.

“You can feel the cold?” Harry asked in surprise. As far as he knew, not all androids were sensitive to temperature. At least Reiner, Jim, and the rest were not.

“Yes. We are equipped with sensors that detect temperature,” Devola said.

“Why didn’t you say so? I would have started the fire way sooner.”

“We did not want to impose,” Popola answered, not meeting his eyes.

Harry focused for a few moments before Transfiguring his wooden chair into a sofa wide enough for all three of them. He also Conjured two thick and fluffy blankets and gave one of them to the girls while keeping the other to himself.

“Thank you,” the girls mumbled shyly as they climbed on the sofa and huddled together under the blanket.

He involuntarily smiled. They looked so cute. He knew that they were several centuries old, or maybe even older, but their behaviour and appearance made him think that they were around his age.

Harry sat down on the sofa too, on the other side.

As they waited for the fire to warm up the cabin, Devola spoke:

“We’ve never seen this kind of magic before. What type of calculations are you performing before casting something of this magnitude?”

“Is that how you’re casting your healing magic?” Harry asked with interest.

“Yes. We were programmed with knowledge of the formulas needed to manipulate the maso in the atmosphere,” Popola answered, making a small sphere of light appear in her hand.

“Maso? What is that?”

“It’s a scarce mystical element that exists in nature. Originally, it came from another dimension, from that Giant’s body when it died. But humans discovered that maso existed in our world too and found a method to use it through mathematics and science.”

Harry let out an impressed sound.

“To think that the Muggles would advance so much. . .”

“Muggles?” the girls asked. They had never heard of that word before.

“It’s what we used to call people without magic,” he replied. "Where I come from, only a small percentage of the population could do magic."

“Are there more people like you? Are there any other humans than you, Harry?” Popola asked. “As far as we know, humanity went extinct thousands of years ago, even before the Aliens’ invasion…”

“Aliens, huh?” Harry said, remembering that the broadcast from the Council of Humanity mentioned them too.

“They’re the ones who created the machine lifeforms,” she replied. “They invaded Earth in the year 5012.”

The more he thought about the history of the world, the crazier it all seemed to become. Nonetheless, finding out that Aliens were real had shaken him less than learning about the fact that he might be the last human alive in the world.

“We don’t know why they invaded, but the higher-ups used the Aliens' invasion as the perfect excuse as to why no humans could be found on Earth anymore, covering up what happened in the past. They told all the new Androids that the handful of human survivors retreated on the moon, and they reprogrammed the older Androids models to forget about the humans’ extinction.”

As the temperature in the cabin started rising, they pulled off their blankets, and Harry summoned some bananas from the kitchen.

"But why did they do that? Why are they keeping humans' extinction a secret? Why go to such lengths?" he asked while peeling off his fruit.

Devola and Popola didn't feel like eating at that moment.

“We are Androids. We were created by humans, for humans. This is the purpose of our existence: to serve and protect humans. How many androids would retain their sanity after finding out that the humans are dead? How many would still want to fight against machines? What would be the point? . . . This lie gives them purpose. Sometimes, hope is all we need."

Harry put down his banana too, suddenly losing his appetite.

Unknowingly, the twins had scooted over while they were talking, and Popola tentatively took his hand in hers.

"That's why you are so important to us, Harry. The Androids would love nothing more than to meet you. . . we’ve been fighting this war for so long, for thousands of years, without as much as a glimpse of the humans that we are sacrificing our lives for. Your presence would give everyone hope. You would be our saviour."

Harry pulled his hand out of hers and looked away. This was like the Wizarding World, all over again. Everyone expected him to be the one to save them. But he knew himself better than anyone else.

'I'm no one special. I'm not good enough.'

He didn't have Dumbledore's strength and wisdom. He didn't have Voldemort's talent and intelligence either. He was just a boy who happened to survive the Killing Curse because of his mother's sacrifice.

How did they expect him to save them from Voldemort? And how did the Androids expect a teenager like him to lead them?

Understanding the meaning of his gesture, the girls pulled back, and Popola asked another question:

“How did you survive until now? Are there any other humans alive? Has humanity actually not gone extinct? Is the Council of Humanity, in fact, not lying about there being humans on the moon?"

Harry considered his options. After thinking for a few moments, he decided to go with the truth.

“I'm sorry. I don’t know about any other people. I don't know about the moon either; I’ve never been there. . . I don’t. . . I’m not even from this timeline. I was born in 1980, nearly 10,000 years ago.”

They looked at him wide-eyed, as though they could not believe their ears.

“I promise you I’m not lying. I have no reason to. I'd gladly let someone else be the 'hope of the androids' if I could,” Harry said. “I’m not sure how I got here. It was an accident. A time-turner, a magical artefact, exploded, and I got caught in it. I arrived in this time period only 1 year and 5 months ago. . .”

He told them about how hard it was for him in the first six months as a 15-year-old boy who suddenly found himself 10,000 years in the future, all alone, in a post-apocalyptic world. How afraid he had been, and how he had almost lost himself to loneliness and despair. He also told them how he had teleported all over the European continent, searching for human settlements.

“Frankly, I don’t know how I got through all that,” he confessed.

It was his first true, sincere conversation with another person ever since he travelled in time. Only now did he realise just how much he had needed that—for someone to care, to listen, to let him speak freely about his inner struggles and fears.

“Why did you try to run from us?” Devola asked. “Why did you try to disappear?”

After getting to know them, and now that he understood just how much his mere existence meant for the two girls, Harry thought carefully about the answer he gave them.

“I was scared. . . I still am. The last time a group of androids found out I was a human, they acted as though they had seen god. . . I don’t want to be seen as some sort of god. I don’t want to be worshipped. I don’t want to live that sort of life. . . I’m just a bloke. All I want is a normal life. And I don’t think I’m better than you in any way.”

“That can’t be true!”

“That’s right, you’re a human! You created us! If you came back with us to Memory Hold-”

"I didn’t create you, Popola. I come from a time when robots as advanced as androids or machines were nothing more than fiction. I’ve never even used a computer. I was just an ordinary guy, one among millions."

But the twins weren’t easily convinced.

"It would still be safer for you to return to Memory Hold. You never know when the machines might find this place. If you go back, you'll be protected. You’ll never miss a thing again. Whatever you desire, all you’d have to do is ask. There would be no greater joy for the Androids than seeing that you exist."

Harry shook his head.

"All I want is a normal life… and companionship. I don’t want to lead. I don’t want to be worshipped. I’d rather stay here, with you two, than go to Memory Hold and tell everyone that I’m human."

He didn’t fully grasp the weight of his words until he saw how flustered Devola and Popola became. His face started getting warmer too, and it wasn’t because of the fire in the hearth.

⁂

Evening came, and Harry found himself spending yet another night together with the twin androids.

He had not been comfortable with the idea of sharing the same space with two girls that he had just met, but the argument they had given him had defeated any objections he might have had:

“If we returned to Memory Hold, the other Androids would stop at nothing to find the truth. They would hack our memory chip, and they would find your location right away.”

Considering the rumours circulating about him and the fact that he had vanished together with Devola and Popola in front of several dozen Androids, he couldn’t find any retorts to that.

It would be quite a hassle for him to move to another place and build himself another home, but it was doable. If he truly wanted to, he could disappear, and the girls and the rest of the androids would never find him again.

But he did not want that. Although androids weren’t human, he still needed them. He needed human interaction with other people. He couldn’t live all alone.

‘Maybe it’s not that bad after all,’ he thought to himself after getting into his bed.

It would take some time to get used to living together with another person in the same space once again, but he was not that affected by it. If anything, it reminded him of his time at Hogwarts, in the Gryffindor dorm.

‘Besides, I’d hate myself to abandon them now.’

He was no stranger to the feeling of guilt that the girls had experienced or to the despair and loneliness that the two of them felt.

‘I was just like them after Cedric died.’

He had blamed himself for taking the Cup together with Cedric. Many times he had beaten himself up over it. Cedric’s death had haunted him for months.

‘I didn’t have anyone back then.’

The end of his fourth year had been the most terrible time of his life.

Cedric was murdered in front of his eyes, and after that, he was tied to a statue; he watched his mortal enemy resurrect; he was tortured with the Cruciatus Curse, and he saw the ghosts of his parents while he fought for his life against the Dark Lord—all that while he was just 14. Moreover, a few months later, the Ministry of Magic sent two Dementors to kill him.

But right when he needed other people’s support the most, when he needed to talk about his trauma and receive counselling, his friends, Dumbledore, and even Sirius had all kept him isolated at the Dursleys. He had been left alone to stew in his own trauma, nightmares, and suffering.

A new resolve was born into his heart.

‘I’ll be for them the friend I wish I had three years ago.’

⁂

Starting with the following day, Harry no longer tried to convince Devola and Popola to return to Memory Hold.

Instead, while the girls were still asleep, he woke up, put on his thickest winter clothes, and went out. Due to Earth being tidally locked, although it was very early in the morning, in November, the sky was as bright as in the middle of the day.

As he walked through the forest, Harry kept his wand in hand at all times, casting a mental Animal Presence Revealing Spell every 15 to 20 seconds. Living in this wild, post-apocalyptic world all alone had made him more cautious than he used to be in the past.

Thanks to how many times he had used this spell lately, Harry had mastered it to perfection and even improved it: not only had he extended its range to well over 50 meters around him, but he had also changed it so that it would only reveal animals larger than a house cat.

Alternating between casting the revealing charm and Cutting Charms, Harry began to work on felling pine trees that could be used to extend his cabin. If the twins were to live in the same house as him, they would need their personal room.

Modifying his house for the sake of two girls that he had met only yesterday would have been unthinkable for him and most people in his original time. Nobody was that whimsical.

However, things were different in the present. He was ten thousand years in the future, and he was the last human left alive in this world. He did not have school, homework, a job, social obligations, or any sort of responsibilities.

Although breaking down one of the cabin’s walls, extending the foundation and the roof of the house, and building a new room were going to be difficult work even with his magic, Harry welcomed it. It would give him an occupation, a purpose. Humans, especially men, need a goal; they need something to keep them busy in their lives.

⁂

Devola and Popola were sleeping in each other’s arms like they always did when a sudden tremor shook them awake. One more tremor made the entire cabin shake again, and the two girls jumped out of bed.

“Did the machines find this place?”

“We have to get to Harry!”

Swords appeared in each of the two girls’ right hands out of thin air, and they ran out of the bedroom.

“Harry!”

“Harry! Where are you?”

They called out his name as they searched for him in the kitchen, bathroom, and living room, but they didn’t receive an answer.

Thinking that he was outside, fighting the machines all alone, the twins rushed out as well.

However, the sight that greeted their eyes was not that of Harry fighting a horde of machines. They stopped in their tracks, stunned at the sight of him levitating thick and tall tree trunks with his wand.

“Hey, good morning!” Harry greeted them merrily when they came out of the cabin. But when he noticed the long, Japanese-looking swords in their hands, he asked, “What’s with the swords?”

“We were woken up by a tremor. We thought that the machines attacked,” said Devola.

“Thank goodness you’re alright!” Popola also said.

Harry grinned.

“Of course I am. There are no machines for hundreds of kilometres around us.”

“What are you doing with those trees?” Popola asked.

After making her sword disappear into thin air, she crossed her arms to her chest and tucked her chin into her shoulders, shivering from the cold.

Harry stopped stacking the tree trunks that he had felled and ushered the girls inside:

“Let’s talk inside. It’s freezing out here.”

“We can wait until you finish,” Devola said.

“It’s alright. The trees aren’t going anywhere.”

Once they were back in the cabin, Harry waved his wand over himself, Vanishing the snow off his clothes, and hung his coat on the rack by the door.

Before arriving in the future, he used to take these small, seemingly insignificant things, such as having shelter and warmth, for granted. However, after spending half a year sleeping wherever he could in the wilderness, Harry gained a new appreciation for the smaller, less obvious things in life.

He tossed a couple of logs in the hearth and chanted a mental Incendio to light them on fire. The crackling of burning wood in the fireplace and the warmth coming from it made him smile.

Devola and Popola noticed Harry’s unusually good mood, and before they knew it, they were smiling along with him.

“Did something good happen?” the wavy-haired girl asked.

“Mhm,” Harry nodded, his excitement evident. “I’m going to modify the cabin.”

Popola tilted her head, her ruler-straight red hair falling on her shoulder. “So that’s why you brought those trees? What are you going to change?”

“Well, you both said you didn’t want to leave, didn’t you?”

The twins froze, their eyes widening.

“You don’t mean—”

Harry chuckled softly at their stunned expressions. “If you’re going to live here, you’ll need your own room and a private bathroom, won’t you?”

Despite his initial reticence, Harry was surprised at his own growing enthusiasm. Now, he understood what Robinson Crusoe must have felt like when he finally got a comrade, another person to share his living space with on the uninhabited island.

Robinson Crusoe’s need for companionship had been so great that he even accepted a cannibalistic, savage man into his home. Before they became close, he had gone as far as to barricade himself in fear of Friday killing him in his sleep, but Robinson Crusoe still did not chase him away.

‘Compared to him, I’m having it so much better.’

Not only was Harry a wizard, but his companions would not be savage cannibals who didn’t even speak his language, but two kind, pretty, and soft-spoken girls. Compared to Robinson Crusoe, Harry considered himself blessed.

“No, Harry, you don’t have to go out of your way for us! We can sleep in the living room!” Popola protested, and Devola was quick to support her sister too: “Popola is right! We can’t make you do something like this for us!”

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to,” he said simply.

He placed a few more logs into the fireplace and then stood up and turned to look at them.

Before the time-travelling accident, Harry had not known how to comfort Cho Chang when she cried on his shoulder. His first relationship—if it could even be called that—had been a wreck. Harry’s experience with girls was abysmal, so he didn’t try to charm Devola and Popola with sweet talk.

Instead, he spoke sincerely, from the heart, telling them the words that he would have wished to hear if he had been in their place.

“I don’t want to treat you in the same way that the other androids treated you. If you’re going to live with me, I want to treat you right. Devola, Popola… you didn’t deserve all the suffering the other androids had put you through until now.”

Seeing their eyes filling with tears, in a move that surprised not only the girls but also himself, Harry took their hands in his and held them gently.

“You don’t have to atone for anything. You did nothing wrong. So promise me that you won’t put yourselves down anymore. . . You aren’t inferior to me or any other androids. You deserve to be happy too. You also deserve to be cared for and comforted. You’ve taken care of so many androids until now and healed all their wounds. . . So let me take care of you now.”

It was as though he knew exactly what words they needed to hear. Outside of their own volition, tears started rolling down their cheeks.

“Come here,” he murmured as he pulled their hands gently towards him.

That was all the encouragement that Devola and Popola needed to throw themselves into his arms. An Android’s physical strength was no joke, and Harry grunted as they knocked the breath out of him when they collided against him, but he didn’t say a word of reproach.

“It’s alright to cry. Let it all out. Cry as much as you want,” he said gently as he caressed the back of their heads. “From now on, I’ll be here for you.”

It was the first time anyone had ever told them a word of comfort. It was the first time someone told them they mattered. It was the first time someone embraced them. They clung to him as if he were their lifeline, sobbing loudly, with their faces buried in his chest.

⁂

Days passed, and with his magic and Devola’s and Popola’s help, two new rooms were added to the cabin seamlessly. But that wasn’t all. Harry also Conjured and Transfigured anything they needed. Furniture, clothes, shoes, bedsheets, additional plates and cutlery, and anything that the girls had asked for once they realised that Harry’s magic could create most things out of thin air, at no cost.

Two weeks later, their work finally came to an end. As the three of them stood outside the cabin, admiring their handiwork, Devola and Popola suddenly linked their arms with him and pressed their shoulders against him, sandwiching him between them.

The girls smiled brightly when he looked at them in surprise, but he did not try to shake them off. The twins’ disposition was a far cry compared to the first day Harry met them. Their perpetually gloomy and apologetic expressions had been replaced by a look of joy and a bright smile.

“What name should we give it?” Harry asked.

“Name?”

“You mean for the cabin?”

“Yes. Back in my time, some wizarding families liked to give their homes a name. For example, my best friend’s family named their home ‘the Burrow’. We should give our cabin a name too.”

“Well, it was mostly your work, was it not? You should name it,” Popola said.

“I want to hear your opinions first.”

Devola and Popola went through their memories and all the data they had collected about humans as they thought of a fitting name.

“How about Elysium? According to our data, it was the name of the afterlife in a very old religion from 12,000 years ago.”

“Hm. Sounds a little too fancy.”

“Then, what about Avalon?” Popola suggested.

“That’s exactly the same!” Harry laughed, and the girls giggled too.

The twins kept coming up with a bunch of new names, such as “Arcadia”, “Eden’s Rest”, “Starveil”, and Harry found himself becoming embarrassed inwardly because all their suggestions were, in one way or another, alluding to paradise.

“I think it should be something more homely. Something that makes you think of warmth, comfort, and cosiness,” he said.

Devola and Popola brought a slender finger to their chins, unknowingly mirroring each other’s posture as they fell deep in thought.

“How about-” Popola began before she and her sister spoke at once: “- the Hearth!”

“It makes me think of the first time we sat by the fire together in your cabin,” Devola said.

“Yes,” Popola nodded in support. “It was warm, cosy. . . it’s also the place where-”

Popola trailed off, her pale face taking on a rosy tint.

“It’s where we were embraced by someone for the first time,” Devola completed her sister’s words.

Embarrassed, she quickly looked the other way, her turned head and wavy hair hiding her face from his eyes.

“The Hearth sounds great,” Harry muttered, trying, and failing, not to show how flustered he was by their confession.

The twins' hold on his arms tightened, and they laid their heads on his shoulders. He was not exactly sure when it started, but Devola and Popola became increasingly affectionate towards him with every passing day.

It started off with sitting close to him on the sofa as they basked in the warmth coming from the fireplace, but then it progressed to fleeting touches, holding his hand briefly in some special moments, to linking their arms with him and hugging his side.

Cho Chang had never been affectionate with him that way, and neither had Hermione, especially since she and Ron seemed to have a weird thing going between the two of them lately. Due to his lack of experience, he was not sure how to react to their behaviour.

However, to say that he disliked their closeness would be a lie. He was just a 17-year-old boy, and the two redheads were so pretty that he often felt his heart lurch whenever they smiled at him.

“Soon, we will have to start decorating for Christmas.”

“Christmas?” Devola asked, only for her expression to change into one of excitement once she processed what he was referring to.

“Is it that holiday that humans used to celebrate in December?” Popola also asked in an enthusiastic voice.

“Is it true that humans used to have feasts and parties?”

“Did they adorn a tall coniferous tree with glittering ornaments?”

Harry smiled for what had to have been the fortieth time that day. Their enthusiasm and joy were contagious.

“Yes, all of that is true. You should’ve seen the Christmas trees we used to have at Hogwarts. We even had living fairies as ornaments. You know the tiny, winged, beautiful girls from fairy tales? Those were real.”

Devola and Popola exchanged a look and smiled at each other. They had noticed how much Harry seemed to love the Wizarding World and Hogwarts, the boarding school he used to live at. He told them stories about them all the time.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t encountered even one magical creature since my accidental time travel. . . I arrived in this time period a year and a half ago, but I haven’t seen so much as a bowtruckle or a kneazle. Do you know anything about them?”

Devola and Popola shook their heads.

“I’m sorry, Harry, as far as I know, there are no records of the creatures you’re talking about.”

“What about Dragons? Species like the Hungarian Horntail, Chinese Fireball, Common Welsh Green?”

“The only Dragons we know of are from another dimension, and they are all dead.”

“Then what about Phoenixes? They’re immortal. Just like in the myths, they are birds of fire that resurrect from their own ashes. Or maybe you’ve heard about Thunderbirds? Enormous birds that can control the weather and cause thunderclaps when flying?”

The twins shook their heads once more.

“I’m sorry we can’t be of help,” Popola apologised.

“I don’t remember reading anything about those creatures. . . but we don’t possess all the data either. Maybe we could go to the data centre in Memory Hold and search for more information,” Devola suggested.

“But how would we get in without being discovered?” Popola asked.

A mischievous look appeared on Harry's face, and, freeing his hand from Popola’s grasp, he took out his wand and cast a silent spell at her hair.

Popola’s ruler-straight, shoulder-length, crimson-red hair suddenly transformed into a green mohawk that defied gravity.

It looked so ridiculous on her sister that Devola instantly burst into laughter.

But then, it was Popola’s turn to laugh when Devola’s wavy red hair became blue and spiky, standing in all directions, as though she had been electrocuted.

To make things fair, he also pointed his wand at his face, turning his nose into a pig’s snout and making oinking sounds.

“I can change our appearance like this,” Harry said when they stopped laughing and reverted the Transfiguration spells he had cast.

“This could work,” Devola said. “As long as someone doesn’t try to scan us in-depth or hack us, we should be able to pass off as different people.”

“You sound excited,” Harry noted.

The girls glanced at each other, seemingly communicating through their eyes, before turning to look at him.

“You have no idea!” they replied at the same time.

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

AN: As I promised at the start of the fic, this story will be primarily about giving the Nier characters I loved a happier life. Devola and Popola are some of the most tragic characters in Nier. They deserved so much better than what they got in the canon. I will do my best to change that here.

Devola (wavy hair) and Popola (straight hair) pic repost: