A/N1: Based off @esamastation’s DSS Requirement ‘verse in which the DA (from the Harry Potter series) find an Asgard ship (of the Stargate variety) and become the first magical crew IN SPACE.
~
Seven is a magical number, but for them, six is better. Even and stable and unifying. Two sets of three or three sets of two.
Six like the number of sides in a hexagon, the strongest and most efficient shape. Six like the colors of their suits, red and gold and blue and bronze and yellow and black. Six like the number of teenagers that would have crept into the ministry, if their world hadn’t made a small but crucial shift several months ago.
Yes, six is a good number.
Medical, Operations, Navigation, Information, Engineering, and Command.
—
(cross)
Hannah Abbott becomes one of the co-heads of the medical team because she is literally the only crew member with any healing experience. She’s been helping Madame Pomfrey in the infirmary for the past two years worth of weekends in lieu of the bimonthly greenhouse sessions Professor Sprout mandates for all of her Hufflepuffs. Except for the first years, who can’t really be trusted with much more than fetch and carry (and even then, sometimes mess that up), Hannah is the only Hufflepuff not on the Herbology chore rota (she has the worst allergies).
A fact which makes the identity of the other co-head of the medical team somewhat ironic–Neville Longbottom is the only non-NEWT level, non-Hufflepuff on said chore rota.
To be honest, Neville isn’t really all that suited to be on the medical team, let alone be one of it’s co-heads. In comparison to the other members, he’s mediocre at Charms and absolute bollocks when it comes to Potions (no surprise there). No, Neville will never be a Healer, and he knows this.
It’s not as if he’s never had hopes as a child–that one day he’d become a brilliant wizard and cure his parents and they’d all live happily together. Eventually, though, he became resigned to the fact that it didn’t matter what kind of wizard he was. Magic couldn’t fix his parents.
But maybe science could.
He’s been learning runes as much as the next crew member–he’s not good enough to be one of Angelina’s team of translators–but he’s a lot more motivated to tackle the medical research than anyone else is. Neville doesn’t need to be a magical Healer, to be a medic on the Requirement.
—
(shield)
Ginny’s father is in a coma. She is fourteen years old, one of the strongest combatants amongst the Requirement’s crew–let alone in Hogwarts–and she is angry.
Her father is in a coma and the Order will not let her do anything or even tell her what is going on. It’s no wonder she’s angry. She is tired of sitting on her hands and letting shit happen to her. Ginny hates being the victim, so she’s not going to let this keep on.
She doesn’t need the Order’s permission to act. And neither does the rest of her team.
Before they were just kids playing around, making toys and candy and reveling in their new secret clubhouse. Now, as part of the Requirement’s new direction, the crew will be using their unique advantages to do what the Order cannot–war is coming, and the Requirement is going to be ready when it comes.
The operations team has three main purposes: combat, security, and retrieval. Eventually the entire crew will be taking part in such missions–no matter how much the captain says the don’t have to–but similarly to how the other teams are learning and preparing, Ginny is training her team to be the leaders. It’s not unlike quidditch, except that these practices will one day save lives.
It’s a lot of responsibility for one fourteen year old girl. Which is why Luna is her deputy.
—
(diamond)
Cho doesn’t feel as empty when she’s charting the Requirement’s path. Space is a void–like the vacuum clawing away at her chest whenever she stops and thinks about how it would’ve been their anniversary soon–but there are asteroids and planets and stars. There’s an entire galaxy waiting for her out here and every day she gets to go somewhere new, somewhere no human has gone before.
It’s a sense of control she hasn’t had since–the third task, seeing him walk into the maze and out of her life–since ever. Cho can control a ship bigger than Hogwarts with a mixture of astronomy, arithmancy and muggle math. It’s flight without the reminder of quidditch–of the way their brooms would circle around each other, looking for the snitch. It’s dancing without the aching feet–and the new high-heeled shoes she wore to match her dress she was still so much shorter than him.
It’s freedom without loss, silence without sorrow. Cho feels more like herself than she has in a long time; settled and, if not happy, then satisfied.
She knows Marietta is relieved, sees it in the way her smiles are less strained, in the absence of her. Now instead of awkward silences, they talk about the navigation team and Marietta’s continued endeavors to make the captain more professional. They actually eat meals together, instead of Marietta eating and Cho pushing the food around on her plate. They are friends again, because Cho is herself again; and she will always be grateful to the Requirement for giving that to her.
~
A/N2: … well… I did warn you… Part One of Two because I said so?
Some unnecessarily long reasoning and ranting under the cut.
Uh, but before that–again, esama, thanks for building such a cool world. If you’d like me to change anything/take this down please just let me know.
Anyway, at the end of Chapter Ten of DSS Requirement, Captain Harry gave his crew a “homework assignment” to figure out an organization system for the ship. Having been hit in the feels, to the point where I made a spreadsheet of the crew members and came up with different occupation allocations, I was like… well. I guess I did it… I should probably get something out of all this effort.
Truthfully, I’m a little embarrassed by how long I spent on it, combing through each chapter to see if a certain name gets mentioned even briefly, but I’m also a little proud? Like… it was also kind of fun, but my brain just kept pestering me to figure this out.
So I figured six different teams/departments (as listed in the tiny first section). As of the main story of DSS Requirement (apparently esama might do a Christmas update oneshot, fingers crossed) there is no operations, medical, or command team but I interpreted certain sentences as going in that direction. Like Neville when he was visiting his parents, Ginny and Luna’s spar, the team breaking into Umbrdige’s office to steal back Ginny’s armor, etc.
Anyway, here is the who’s who of the medical, operations, and navigation teams.
Medical:
- Hannah Abbott (co-head),
- Neville Longbottom (co-head),
- Michael Corner (also in operations, and possibly navigation and/or information),
- Luna Lovegood (also deputy of operations and in engineering),
- Ernie Macmillan,
- Padma Patil (also in information),
- Alicia Spinnet (also in operations)
Operations:
- Ginny Weasley (Head),
- Luna Lovegood (deputy, also in medical and engineering),
- Katie Bell (possibly also in information and/or engineering),
- Susan Bones (possibly also in command),
- Michael Corner (also in medical, and possibly navigations and/or information),
- Dennis Creevey,
- Seamus Finnegan (also possibly in engineering),
- Zacharias Smith (somehow also in navigation, information, and possibly command),
- Alicia Spinnet (also in medical),
- Dean Thomas (also in navigation)
Navigation:
- Cho Chang (Head),
- Marietta Edgecombe (deputy also in command),
- Michael Corner (also in operations, and possibly medical and/or information),
- Justin Finch-Fletchley (also possibly in information),
- Parvati Patil (also possibly in command),
- Zacharias Smith (somehow also in navigation, information, and possibly command),
- Dean Thomas (also in navigation)
Frankly, a lot of people were never mentioned in the story. Period. Some whose names were mentioned had like one line of dialogue with no clue as to what they are doing the entire time. Zacharias Smith was mentioned in a whopping six out of ten chapters and he is doing something productive in at least four of them on different teams. That boy is busy.
So really it’s a lot of guessing and looking at the HP wiki and seeing whose skills would be best where (which is how I found out that Hannah Abbott actually becomes a Healer so…)
As for the section headers, I figure since–completely against my Star Trek influenced brain–the uniform colors are related to House and not jobs, that they’d probably have to figure out a different way to differentiate team members on sight. So basic symbols in painted in white possibly on their back of on their shoulders or somewhere easily visible. So medical is the classic cross shape (apparently it’s called a Greek cross when all arms are equal length and it is not slanted), operations are a heater shaped shield, and navigation is a diamond (though I’m not sure if I just want a regular diamond like a diagonal square or if I want the skinny slanted thing so that it looks like a compass needle).
Information, engineering, and command I had the weird persevering thought that they represented the three Deathly Hallows? So information is a circle (like the resurrection stone–like the communication stones), engineering is a triangle (like the Invisible cloak of both the magic and scientific varieties), and command is a vertical line/bar (like the Elder Stick, because wands are the only things that the Requirement can’t give them… possibly).
And then, for those crew members who are on multiple teams, they would have multiples symbols with their main team being the largest and their other designations being smaller and inside. So for example Luna, who is deputy of operations and also in engineering and medical, hers would be a shield with a cross and a triangle inside. (I have no idea what Zacharias Smith’s would look like).
In Part Two I will talk about the information, engineering, and command teams. 😀