That had the general perk up. "Where?" he demanded.
"Massachusetts, Sir," replied the captain, handing over a slim file. "Her parents immigrated here from England back in mid July, 1996. Apparently, that was about a month after whatever it was that allegedly happened to Mister Potter under Whitehall."
As Hammond flicked open the file, he was given the relevant physical information of the girl right on top. Of course, one of those pieces of data was the home address of her parents. There were still quite a number of blanks, though; but the photo wasn't one of them. The girl had picked up a Massachusetts driver's license only eighteen months earlier. The address on the license was the same as her parents.
"Keep working on this," said Hammond. "If they're here it means we don't have to go through so many diplomatic channels to talk to them. The Granger woman should be able to confirm a lot of what our Mister Potter told us."
"Yes, Sir," replied the captain with a nod before she walked out. Hammond caught the attention of a security forces sergeant and said, "Call in SG-1 and tell them I want to speak with them. We've got a lead I want them to chase up."
"Yes, Sir," said the sergeant before hurrying off.
Harry found the right ship and, after casting a Notice-me-Not on himself, boarded it to check it out.
He found the personnel, crew, of the ship in a major cleaning frenzy as if it hadn't long returned from a voyage. Which made sense, since a passenger ship wasn't making any money sitting alongside a dock between cruises.
On board, he found a pamphlet that had a map of the ship layout of the passenger areas and disembarked again.
With that in hand he went and found a café and pilfered some food - some to eat now, some to put under stasis and eat later - before taking it to a park across 12th Avenue from the Terminal to eat. As he sat there, enjoying his food, he was building a list within his mind of what he should have been paying for everything. He did not consider himself a thief; so would be paying each of the people he took something from, including for the use of the motel room he stayed at in Wichita, once he got to Gringotts.
He could, of course, have made his way back to magical Britain by magical means. However, he had no idea whether or not Voldemort had taken control of the country while he was off-planet. And did not want to trigger any alerts the man or his people had set up in the meantime.
That meant sneaking in to the country a muggle way. And, knowing security was going to be much tougher at international airports, decided he'd try to get in via ship. He was quite willing to travel on a cargo ship. However, on a passenger liner he'd have access to good food. His asking the travel agent general questions told him that, as long as he didn't eat within the restaurants on the ship, nor drank any alcohol at any of the on-board bars, all the food in the main cafeterias on-board were included in the cost of the ticket.
After eating his fill, he went to a local 'inn' and found himself a room he could use until he'd be able to board the next afternoon. He used the same methods to secure his room as the one in the Wichita motel.
The next day, after eating his kept-under-stasis food for breakfast and meditating for most of the remainder of the morning, Harry let himself out of his room and walked back across 12th Avenue to the Terminal. He wanted to be early, but not too early in case someone noticed anything. He had no idea whether or not a security camera could see through a Notice-me-Not and wasn't willing to find out the hard way.
One of the first things he did, once on-board, he used his map to walk to the area on the ship he thought would most suit. He avoided the elevators and used the stairs as it would not do for someone to notice a lift operate without anyone, apparently, in it.
On the right floor he then found a utility compartment that didn't appear to get used for much and let himself in. Then he employed his magics.
First, he cast a powerful hiding charm on the compartment. He then cast muggle avoidance, wizard avoidance, Notice-me-Not on the door, an illusion over the outside of the door to even hide it from security cameras... he hoped... plus others.
Once that was done he muttered, "Right." Then, inside, set to work with transfiguration. He wizard-spaced the crap out of the compartment until it was huge. Then he set-to with transfiguring what was already in there into what he'd need for a two week voyage, comfort-wise.
He'd actually already looked into a similar stateroom for that floor and made his transfigured utility compartment somewhat match. He even successfully hooked into the water and sewerage systems simply by using his now 'tried and true' method of employing sheer willpower and intent to make it happen. However, as he had no electrical devices and he didn't want to screw around with transfiguring electricity wires anyway, he didn't hook the compartment up to any of that. He already knew electricity and magic didn't play well together and wasn't prepared to experiment here to see if he could figure out a way to get around it.
Once done he settled in to wait. All that transfiguration work had again tired him out. So, after first making sure his hiding and security charms were doing their job, he laid down on his bed and went to sleep.
When Harry woke he found the ship had already 'set sail'. They were now exiting the mouth of the Hudson River and the ship was starting to swing from its south-easterly heading to a more easterly one.
He was also hungry again.
Casting an illusion over himself to disguise his appearance in case his plan to just blend in with the other passengers didn't work, he mentally fortified himself and left his little hidey-hole. He'd already stored the map of the ship in memory so knew how to get to the cafeteria. That's where he headed.
It worked.
So far, he was able to move about the ship with no one, apparently, the wiser. He'd gone to the cafeteria and eaten a decent, though plain, feed and decided to do what a lot of the other passengers were apparently doing; he explored.
SG-1 had just returned to the SGC from a quick visit to Massachusetts and went straight in to see Hammond.
"Well?" he demanded.
"It was... kind of weird, Sir," replied a clearly unhappy Jack.
"We specialise in weird, remember?" said the General. "What happened?"
Sam replied, "We had the wary greeting you would expect when civilians are met with USAF officers at the door, Sir. However, they invited us in, no problems.
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