[08:01] JPL: Mark, this is Venkat. We’d much prefer that the Rover 1 computer and radio be integrated into Friendship, but we concur with your decision to postpone that until Dragonfly recovers. With that in mind we’ve got a revised procedure for you to detach the Rover 1 pressure vessel intact, install one of the Hab hydrogen cells inside, and convert it into a stationary radio relay post. A lot of the wiring for that task will come from salvaging parts of the MDV that are no longer mission critical. We should be able to continue its use as a flight simulator with the components remaining inside.

While you’re studying those procedures, we’d like you and your friends to proceed with the procedure set to remove Friendship’s tail and salvage its components. You still have a lot of time, but we’d be happier if we ran ahead of schedule than behind, and in theory trimming the ship is a simple task.

[08:27] WATNEY: Unable to comply today. We have a special procedure planned at the cave that might take all day. We’ll begin work on lopping off the back of Friendship tomorrow. This is more important.

“… the train began to move, and Harry walked alongside it, watching his son’s thin face, already ablaze with excitement…”

The five of them sat around the cocoon as Mark read from the computer. They’d all taken turns reading at various points. Spitfire and Fireball had stumbled across fewer words than normal. After yesterday’s revealation of the memories of the dying Severus Snape, the decision had been unanimous; to complete the final three chapters and epilog of the Harry Potter saga in one marathon reading session.

“As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly and touched the lightning scar on his forehead. ‘I know he will.’ The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.”

After taking a deep breath, he said, “The end,” and closed the text document.

“Albus and Scorpius will be best friends at school, won’t they?” Cherry Berry asked.

“I still can’t believe Ron and Hermione stayed together long enough to raise kids!” Starlight Glimmer protested. “Ron is such a… a… give me that computer, I need to look up a word.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Do you want the thesaurus or Mitch Henderson’s swear glossary?”

“Both!”

“Who cares about them?” Spitfire demanded. “That was all happy-ever-after stuff. Talk about the battle! How cool it was!”

“I thought the part with Harry talk to Dumbledore was dumb,” Fireball insisted. “Too neat. Too easy. But it was good when he said he was wrong. About time.”

“Hey, cut Dumbledore some slack,” Starlight insisted.

“I don’t know what that means,” Fireball protested.

“It’s the same metaphor in Pony as in English!” Starlight said, followed by a quick burst of pony talk in which the name Dumbledore rose like a buoy in choppy seas.

“Oh. Why should I?”

“Because take it from someone who knows,” Starlight said, “you can have clever plans and mean all the best, and then have all of them go straight to… to…”

“Straight to Hell?” Mark asked, curious.

“No, no,” Starlight said impatiently. “You told me Hell is where evil people go after death, right? But back home we have a real place for evil people, and anyone can go there without dying first. It’s not far from our capital. I don't know what a good English name for it is, though.”

“Er… prison?” Mark considered this, and added, “By the way, when we get to Earth you want to be careful about saying Hell is or isn’t real, depending on which human-“

“MY POINT IS,” Starlight shouted, overriding Mark’s caution, “you can have the best plans and be the smartest person and it can all fall apart.” She stared at Fireball and added, “You can’t tell me you don’t understand that.”

“Not really,” Fireball shrugged. “I’m not smartest person, and I don’t have best plans. Not my job.”

“The battle!” Spitfire insisted. “What was that with Elder Wand? It sounded like Harry did something smart- clever,” she corrected herself. “But I don’t get how it worked.”

“Don’t you remember at the end of the last book?” Cherry Berry asked. “When the Death Eaters came in, Draco was the one who Expelliarmussed Dumbledore’s wand away!”

Mark silently considered how Cherry still stumbled over words and grammar sometimes, but had no problem coining the past tense of a made-up spell name.

“He did? I thought that was Snape!”

“No, it was Draco! He could disarm Dumbledore, but he couldn’t kill! But by the rules of the Elder Wand, that counted as defeat! And then Harry disarmed Draco! So that made Harry the wand’s master, do you see?”

“I guess so, but how did Voldemort die, then?”

“Because Voldemort never defeated Harry in a duel. Harry let Voldemort zap him without a fight. That destroyed the last Horcrux in Harry’s scar and-“

“I still don’t understand that,” Fireball said. “I thought Voldemort wanted kill Harry.”

“I think he didn’t mean to make a Horcrux,” Starlight said. “But he was kind of, well, ripping parts of his soul off and hiding them everywhere. That's Shadow-king level dark magic. Also really stupid. What he had left must have been really torn up. Maybe a piece just got… well… stuck.”

“That doesn’t explain why Voldemort finally died!!” Spitfire exclaimed.

“The Elder Wand doesn’t harm its true master,” Starlight said. “So when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, the spell backlashed on him. Voldemort killed himself.”

“Ooooooh.” Spitfire nodded her understanding, then froze. “Backlash?” she asked, horror growing on her face. “Does that mean you-“

“No, no, no, NO,” Starlight protested hurriedly. “Magic doesn't work like that! Ordinary spell failure doesn’t kill. The spell itself would have to be tremendously potent or else a dark magic spell. I just get headaches.”

“You just get in the bunk for days and days!”

“Because you won’t let me get up!!”

“Girls,” Cherry Berry said quietly.

The bickering ceased.

“My favorite part was where Harry used the Resurrection Stone to say goodbye to his lost family,” the earth pony said. “That was so touching. Especially when you consider he thought he was going to his own death.”

The silence grew silenter. Everyone quite pointedly avoided looking at the cocoon.

“So, um,” Mark said, trying to move things along, “what would Dragonfly have thought... er, what do you think she thinks about this ending?”

“You know she was all in favor of Snape,” Starlight said. “She’d be sad that he died, but she’d be strutting back and forth now about how her man was the real hero and how Harry couldn’t have done it without him.”

“That’s probably right,” Cherry Berry. “She kind of grew up with Snape, if Snape was an evil queen.”

“Really?” Mark asked. “I thought Chrysalis was a big space hero like you.”

“Not at all like me,” Cherry said flatly. “And I know her too well for her be my hero.”

“Closer to Voldemort than Snape,” Spitfire added. “Not so... wossword... obsessed... with living forever, but still sort of bad.”

“So,” Starlight said, “is that all there is?”

“Well, there was a play that was like an eighth book,” Mark said. “And some prequel books and movies. But those aren’t as popular. This is pretty much the end of Harry’s story. He went on to become an Auror, raised some kids, and had a long and happy life.”

“So, no more reading?” Starlight asked.

“Well, we got sent several other series,” Mark said. “A couple of murder mystery series to go with the Agatha Christie books-“

“Pass,” Cherry Berry and Spitfire said.

“Aw,” Starlight moaned.

“- some classic science fiction by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke… but I figured we’d stick with fantasy.”

Mark’s fingers flicked across the keyboard, and a new text document popped up. “This one was written sixty years before the Potter books,” he said. “The author was deliberately writing it to be read aloud, like a story for children. But by the end it became part of the mythology he’d been making up all his life. And this is the first chapter…”

He cleared his throat and began, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

“What’s a hobbit?” Starlight asked.

Cherry looked around at the cavern they sat in, with hay growing, afternoon sunlight relayed through the forest of crystals in the ceiling, and a comfortable breeze blowing from the life support box, and asked, “Are we hobbits?”

Mark ignored the questions and continued to read.

Author's Notes:

Yay, speeding ticket!

No writing today- all work. We'll see how much down time and concentration I have tomorrow.

BTW, I'm really flattered at all the continued attention the song is getting.