SUNKEN MILLIONS

'But sir, how can you allow that thing to sail when you how many lives are there at stake. Once that ship leaves, we’ll just have to wait and hope that the deal goes well because a mere disturbance would mean compromising with hundreds of lives.’ Said Russel.

‘I wish it was possible to abort this voyage but the government is too adamant as its about their image now. It’s a dream kind of thing now.’ Said the chief of SIS

‘So are we just going to sit here and wait until all that heroin gets shipped safely to New York and the whole city gets sedated and their newspapers blame us again.’

‘This is all we can do right now.’

‘Or maybe we can do our own arrangements to ensure the citizens stay alive because all of them boarding that ship are the top 1 percent of the population and it would be a shame for the nation if all of them die. In fact, I don’t understand why they are too keen to smuggle heroin now!? It’s not that rare now and most importantly it’s not that expensive.’

‘Heroin would be the most common sedative in future and government will ban its production shortly, so I guess they are trying to stock as much as they can to earn more profit later.’ said the chief.

(RUSSEL took out a photograph and showed it to the chief, Raymond.)

‘He is Jack Dawson. He will board the Titanic using a ticket that he would claim he won in a lottery. He is the main guy who will oversee all the matters of the deal. He is a very famous con man and has looted many wealthy ladies with his charm. He is a wonderful diver and a trained fighter. He uses techniques to estimate depth of water and has looted many ships by throwing the goods in ocean and later recovering them.’

‘‘So, you’re saying he uses techniques to estimate the depth of ocean!? That’s impressive but do you know who else knows how to estimate depth and distance in the dark? A Bat and my good man, do we not know a superhero bat?’’ said the chief smiling.

‘Yes, sir we do, we do and now let me call Wayne Enterprises and ask them to arrange us a call with BRUCE WAYNE.’

Next day they talked with Bruce (Batman) and he agreed to board the ship and ensure the safety of the passengers, the security agents also sent him a portrait of Jack Dawson and asked Bruce to keep an eye on him.

Finally on 10th of April, 1912, The Unsinkable Titanic sailed for New York. Bruce Wayne and Jack both boarded the ship. Jack was constantly trying to get in touch with the rich class of the ship and he seemed completely carefree of the drug deal, he looked a delusional boy who just wants to paint and enjoy the life of a rich which completely surprised Bruce and he started to believe that the detectives had a wrong intel and Jack is probably not the main guy he is supposed to be after. So, Bruce decided to conduct his personal investigation of the ship.

Meanwhile Jack seemed lost in his dreamworld, he was hanging around with a rich lady called Rose. One day Bruce saw him standing with Rose on the bow with their stands spread. The other day Batman saw Jack doing a portrait of Rose, with just a diamond necklace on! Jack was totally in love and this completely put him out of suspects list.

Bruce continued his investigations and one day he noticed something suspicious going behind the engine room. He noticed some people entering the fuel room with huge suitcases. He followed them and entered the room secretly and to his surprise none of the fuel containers had fuel, in fact they were all filled with packets of heroin. Bruce turned his head sidewards to find several gunman counting the money that was brought in the suitcases. There were millions of dollars. Batman (Bruce) used his EMP gun to switch off all the lights around instantly. With the silence and patience as his ally he was able to strip them off their armors. When lights came back Bruce had all the guns and every other person in the room was beaten down to the ground. He tied them all up and left with all the money and heroin to store them in a safe place.

No gun fires, no lives lost, everything seemed under control. Bruce could finally have some rest as mission was almost complete. But even in this completeness something was incomplete, something wasn’t adding up. Lost in his thoughts Bruce was strolling through a platform on the mast of the ship, and he noticed some commotion below so he flew down to check if everything was alright. There was chaos all around the deck. He stopped a crew member to ask what was wrong and he told him a diamond has been stolen. It was called ‘Heart of The Ocean.’ It was a gift to a lady called Rose by his rich fiancé. There are five diamonds like these, one for each of the oceans. A man called Jack Dawson who is rumored to be romantically involved with Rose has escaped with that diamond.

The total price of all the five ‘Hearts of The Ocean’ is more than twenty percent of New York’s GDP. One was stolen last year and now this. Someone is after these gems but these are England’s heritage and loosing these one by one is bringing shame to our nation.

After Bruce heard the name Jack, he quickly realized the mistake he had done and everything became clear to him. The heroin smuggling was just a bait to cover the heist. Bruce started searching for Jack just like a madman. He went upstairs, Jack was in captain’s room with his gun pointed on captain’s head. Batman tried using the EMP again to switch off the lights but this backfired. The moment he switched them off a gun was fired and when the lights came back captain was lying on the floor dead. Jack was gone. Bruce regretted using darkness to fight a thief whose only ally is darkness. He went on to check on the captain but he was motionless. He got up to jump in the Atlantic to go after Jack but as he looked out

, he saw a huge iceberg right in front of the ship. He could do nothing and ‘The Titanic’ hit the iceberg. A hole was drilled in the steel body of the ship because of the impact. Bruce’s prime duty was now to save the lives of several on board passengers. He helped the crew members to lower the life rafts and helped the workers to draw out water from the ship to buy more time. Finally, most of the crew members and passengers were evacuated from the ship that finally settled on the Atlantic Ocean bed. Bruce took some passengers and Rose with him on his aircraft and dropped them home.

Few days later, Bruce returned to Rose and told her how much he regrets not warning her about Jack to which she replied it was not his fault as his looks were quite deceiving and no one could have figured out his intentions. After a little chit chat Bruce got up to leave but stopped him and asked him to wait, so Bruce did. She took out ‘Heart of The Ocean’ and gave it to him.

‘With his fake love and assurances, he was never able to steal my heart not this. The one he took with him was just a duplicate stone.’

Bruce took the necklace and left.

‘The beauty and brilliance of this precious stone will always force humans to forget their values in order to have it. This stone will only cause pain so, It should be returned to where it belongs.’ Bruce said to himself and dumped it in the ocean the next day.

"ARRESTO MOMENTUM!" yelled Harry, at the van which was plunging towards the river, not knowing if he will get it on time. He only had this one shot.

*A few weeks back...*

This time of the year was Harry's least favorite. Everyone else seemed to be happy to be going back to their families after a tough year of studies, whereas Harry had to go stay with his foster parents, of which he hated every moment. For him, Hogwarts was home. Something which did give him a bit of hope was this year's stay with the Dursleys would be shorter as Ron had promised to take Harry to watch the Quidditch World Cup finals. Ron had promised that his dad would secure the tickets, and once it was done, he would let Harry know. Harry loved it at the Weasleys, they were like the family he never had.

Regardless, he enjoyed having the last days of the mostly empty school to himself. He also had the company of letters from his Godfather, Sirius, which they had started exchanging in secret. It was a foreign feeling for him: having a loving family member to talk to. He sometimes wondered why had Dumbledore and others kept the existence of Sirius from him for all these years.

One of the days, he was wandering in the library, just searching for something interesting in the vast shelves of endless books on magic and incantations. Not that magic wasn't interesting to him, but he was looking for something different. One of the many advantages of most people going home, was that he could roam around the forbidden section of the library relatively freely. Of course, he had to use the Cloak of Invisibility, but still. Not having other students and teachers moving around him was a plus.

He did come across quite a few things which he had never imagined. Dimensional breaching spells, Dragon taming incantations, dream invasion potions and what not. That last one had him specifically interested, as he came to know that some wizards used dream invasion to extract hidden memories and secrets from their rivals. He wondered if there was some way he could see what dreams did Professor Snape got, given his ambiguous nature. Imagine what secrets Dumbledore held close to his heart. As Harry kept on reading, he discovered a list of infamous muggle fugitives who had been reported to be using dream invasion magic. There was one Mr. Cobb which caught Harry's attention. Mr. Cobb was last seen in Paris, visiting the École d'Architecture University. This man stayed in Harry's head for a few days. The main reason being the proximity. Paris was relatively close, and if he could get Oliver Wood, the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team to convince the captains of the other houses to organise an exhibition match against the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, there was a significant chance that he could find a window to visit Paris and learn about this technique of 'Dream Extraction' from Mr. Cobb, given that Hogwarts would never teach a dark magic like this to its young students.

After much deliberation, Oliver agreed to schedule a friendly match with their French neighbors, in the spirit of the coming World Cup. As most students had gone home, the team which was formed had a lot of inexperienced players. Which was for the better, as this would give them some match time, which they otherwise wouldn't have. So they were off to the beautiful Pyrenees Mountains in Southern France, where Beauxbatons were located.

After the matches were over, everyone decided to go home directly, instead of stopping by Hogwarts. Harry took this opportunity to fly over to Paris, on his Firebolt. He needed an excuse to use his new broom a bit more before the next year started. So a three hour journey to Paris seemed like a good idea.

Finding Mr. Cobb wasn't hard. Cobb had a team of skilled extractors, having the finesse to perform corporate espionage on the subconscious level of their victims. The Cloak of Invisibility allowed Harry to understand all the plans these extractors were working on. He needed to experience it himself. Ariadne's inquisitive nature and freshness to the team would be the perfect veil for Harry. He had already prepared the Polyjuice potion from her hair. He cast Obliviate at her before taking her place in the team.

According to Arthur, brain function in a dream was increased to about twenty times of that of the normal. Harry learnt that totems were useful in telling reality from dreams. He told others that his wand was his totem.

Everything was ready: Fischer was about to get on a ten hour long journey from Sydney to LA. This was the window which the team needed to perform Inception, the act of planting an idea into someone's mind. Everyone got on the plane and strapped themselves into the suitcase. Harry closed his eyes, as the dream took over.

It was a rainy afternoon in LA. Harry was drenched as he got in a car with Cobb. Without warning, a train appeared out of seemingly nowhere and hit their car. Harry knew that Cobb had some serious issues with his subconscious, and this was a result of that. They heard gunfire down the street and took a detour to meetup with others.

Arthur and Cobb argued about their course of action, as Eames walked, cocking the gun to shoot Saito dead, who was injured. Cobb stopped him as due to the nature of the sedative they were on, if they died in the dream, they would not wake up.

Arthur and Eames took shoots at the soldiers surrounding them. Harry joined them and pulled out his wand, casting "Reducto". Walls exploded and crumbled around the soldiers. As others looked at Harry, shocked, he laughed and said that he likes magic in movies. Later, everyone, including the blindfolded Fischer, got into the van and went down another level in the dream. Plan was to drive the van off a bridge to give the kick to wake everyone.

Harry and Arthur found themselves in a nice hotel lobby. Cobb was going to play Mr Charles, which was a tactic to deceive the target into believing that they were good, while the target's subconscious was bad.

Arthur set the charges in a hotel room, for the second level kick. They waited for Cobb and Fischer. Cobb told Fischer that Browning was the one who got him kidnapped in the 'real' world to extract the combination to a safe that Fischer Senior had in his room. They captured the Browning who was the projection of Fischer and convinced Fischer to go inside Browning's subconscious to find out his secret of the safe.

They plugged themselves into Eames' dream, while Arthur stayed back for activating the kick.

This was a snowy mountain with a military hospital in the distance. Yusuf put the music on for Arthur, who did the same for Eames. Cobb realized that this was too early and told everyone to hurry up. They only had sixty minutes left to get Fischer to breach the base and open the vaults contents.

When Fischer reached the vault, the manifestation of Mal, shot him and pushed him into Limbo. Saito's injuries worsened and he too fell. Harry asked Cobb to go down to Limbo and rescue Fischer from there.

Both of them went down another level and woke on a beach. They found Mal, and requested her to give Fischer up.Cobb revealed that he was the one who put the idea of the world not being real into the mind of Mal.

Harry found Fischer and threw him down a building for his kick to wake him at the third level, then jumped himself. Cobb stayed behind to rescue Saito from Limbo.

When Harry woke in the third level, he saw Fischer trying to unlock the safe door. Harry approached him and cast: "Alohamora!"

With metallic creaking, gears on the door turned and the parts gave way to an entrance, with Fischer Senior on his death bed. Fischer walked up to him.

The music was fast approaching it's conclusion. Harry realized that there was no way that they would make it in time. He didn't want to do it, but now he didn't have any choice left. He fumbled in his jackets and pulled out a fine golden necklace. It was the Time Turner that Hermione had given to him after that year's events. Usually, one turn would take him back by one hour. But in the current scenario, he was in a dream, three layer deep. 1 hour on the dream level three, 3 minutes on dream level two and 9 seconds on dream level one. So if he turned the time turner once, he could get back at dream level one, but with only 9 seconds to spare. He decided to go for it. He had to slow down the first 'kick' so that down in the third level, Cobb and Fischer would have more time to finish their work. Going back too much would mean that he could risk being seen by Yusuf. That is one rule from Dumbledore that he still remembered: Do not be seen.

Harry took a deep breath and spun it. The world around him rushed past- the snowy mountains, the hotel lobby... He felt something was sucking him in a void.

Nine seconds.

Nine. He found himself lying on asphalt, with rain pattering on his face. Eight. He had to move quick. Seven. He could see the van rushing towards the barriers of the bridge. Six. The van broke through the barriers and started its descent. Five.

"ARRESTO MOMENTUM!" yelled Harry, at the van which was plunging towards the river, not knowing if he will get it on time. Four. He only had this one shot.

Three.

Two.

Harry saw the van slow down in it's fall.

One. He did it.

Zero.

He hoped those few seconds were enough. If everything went well, he should be seeing everyone swim out of the van. He waited. Rain battering down from the skies, occluding Harry's vision through his glasses.

Finally he saw someone swim towards the river bank. It was Fischer and Eames, as Browning.

He saw four other people swimming towards the opposite side of the river.

Yes. It had worked. Four people, implied Cobb was successful in bringing back Saito. Everyone was safe.

They all woke up in the plane around the same time. Harry looked around and saw Eames smiling at him(her). Inception was successful.

At the LA Airport, everyone gave meaningful glances at each other, silently conveying their congratulations for the success with subdued smiles.

Harry, walked towards the glass wall in the waiting room and stared at planes taking off and landing.He had learnt a lot in his one month long mission, about the secrets of dream invasion. He was a dream invader for a month. He was feeling relieved that nothing went wrong. No one noticed him do 'real' magic either.

He noticed a tuft of smoke in the distance. A few moments passed. That tuft of smoke had gotten bigger, and was getting bigger by the second. A chill went down Harry's spine. That was no tuft of smoke. It was a Dementor- coming directly towards him...

A Moment of Euphoria:

The tale of an ill-fated voyage of the gigantic Titanic is not unknown by the globe. A maiden so heavenly that even the spectators would doubt she's a man's creation - The Colossal Titanic! A nirvana carrying thousands of magnate souls in her belly from the aristocratic crowd in Southampton to New-York was an absolute dream of the blue collar mass serving the white collars with their exorbitant possessions into their dream-ship.

"Lumos Maxima!" exclaimed Harry while making his way through the ruins of the beautiful

maiden ship lying deep down in the darkness of the ocean .

Lying 3,800 meters below the freezing Atlantic, her exquisite treasures stunned Harry.

He thought, "it's in the ruins we find the treasures" when he stumbled upon a swamped closet hidden under the layers of debris. In the quest of destroying the Salazar Slytherin's Locket-one of the Dark Lord's Horcruxes he dived further into the dense darkness of the ocean through the cave. Immediately, he spells "Fiendfyre" stabbing one of the lockets with the basilisk's fang! And voila! No change. No Dementors circling, no mysterious sounds in parseltongue. Wondering and wandering he understood his quench of destroying the horcrux is still not satisfied. But what was that locket? A deep-blue heart shaped divine diamond locket in the bosom of the dark deep blue Atlantic?

"Enervate!" he spelled pointing the Dumbledore's powerful Elder Wand towards the locket.

Through his insights he could make out whom the locket and the precious closet belonged to.

"Apparition" he enchanted and vanished just to appear in the sight of an old lady gracefully pottering in her blossomed balcony.

With the walking stick in her hand she blazed onto him for almost a minute when he interrupted, "Ms. Rose?"

She corrected, "Rose Calvert." He corrected, "More precisely, Rose Dawson."

He could not stop gazing at those French arts embedded on her textured walls and could not clearly but obscurely make out these visual arts were inspired from the French girls of the early nineteen.

"Here you see beneath the depths of the ocean, I stumbled into the precious wreckage of the grand maiden with deep secrets locked in her hulls."

"Here's what I found, for you, my lady."

"I see. Seems like an absolute serendipity to you, eh? She replies with a beaming smirk on her face.

"Why not. Who could let this beautiful lady on the crumpled piece of paper be left unseen under the bottom of the sea for eternity?"

With the support of her old-age stick she welcomingly receives the persevered relics from the boy.

Her flesh seemed full of blood and an irresistible radiance through her folded skin shone.

Harry's forehead scar shone as he witnessed the 100 year old lady laying her eyes on the portrait!

As soon as she closed her eyes, Harry could hear the hymns of the sea with the vision of a twinkling deep blue ocean eyes, blonde hair, gently sliding his graphite covered fingers on a piece of paper portraying a beautiful virgin on a couch. Through his insights of the lady, he experiences an absolute gratification while feeling the gentle air on his scar and hearing the gentle waves of the ocean.

With the glitter in her eyes as if the entire galaxy shone it's way through it, tears rolled down Rose Dawson's wrinkled cheeks when the scarred boy handed her the deep-blue 'Heart Of the Ocean' and an alluring woman's portrait which was an absolute vision! The memories of her being baffled up in silk high collars with underlayers of gripping corset, kissing a young charmer on the edge of the Titanic and exclaiming 'I feel like I am flying, Jack!' while wearing King Louis XVI's blue diamond flashed like a thunderbolt in her mind.

She told, "I just feel the way you feel your thunderbolt scar, Harry." She completely sinks into the memories of "The Unsinkable Titanic".

"After 84 years, I feel so young again!", exclaimed Rose.

"For a moment I saw my mother in you madam. When I saw her last she was this young.

Have never felt this love in years. All thanks to the insightful wand of my professor."

"Apparition!" he charmed and vanished in a blink of her eye.

"Such a charmer he was!" Rose wonders while looking through one the precious mirrors in

the pile of relics.

"He might be the son of the same five year old I and Jack Dawson had saved from drowning

in the corridors of young Titanic."

"Oh such a lovely pain! Now they both only exist in my memory." she sighs while cherishing

the vision of her youthful Jack through the Mirror of Erised.

After all this time? Always!