Chapter 4 Growing Up and Luna's Last Gifts
Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover
Chapter 4 Growing Up and Luna's Last Gifts
796 BBY-795 BBY
2,857 ATC-2,858 ATC
Dantooine/ The Wider Galaxy
"So are you a Jedi boy?" asked Drell bluntly
It was a testament to how tired he was that Harry had no sarcastic come back to such a blunt and ridiculous question.
"No" he said as he sighed and looked firmly into Drell's eyes "are you going to kill me now?"
"Only if you don't give me the bag freely kid…" the other Rodian spoke for the first time and, in contrast to Drell, he looked eager for a fight. "Now be a good little boy and give us your bag and you get to go on home".
"If you take my bag you may as well kill me. I'll starve to death". He spoke that last sentence slowly, making it clear that he believed every single word. Drell began to look uncertain even as his friend snorted derisively.
"Boo hoo kid. It's a big wide Galaxy and the sooner you grow up and realise that the better off you will be". His eyes roamed Harry critically "You look just about done in as it is. Maybe we should just put you out of your misery hey?"
Harry stared at Drell, even the merchant looked resigned to this. Harry shrugged.
"I am a survivor". He paused "Just remember you wanted this, not me, and for what it's worth I don't want to do this but you really are giving me no other choice". His wand, still in his left hand, started to pulse ever so slightly with a red light from its tip.
"Ragro maybe we shouldn't?" questioned Drell.
"Be quiet!" Responded the now identified Ragro "We do this and we are rich, no more dealing with idiots for you and true wealth for me, now is not the time to get squeamish. Let's take him now".
With that, both blasters rose up to take his life but Harry was already moving, speed his only ally, diving for cover behind a broken pillar that was barely waist high and screaming a cutting curse as he went.
He was still injured and, despite his nap, pretty much exhausted from fighting his way down to the locked door. It was no great surprise then when his spell did not come out correctly. Instead of the smooth red beam that Harry had expected, there was rather a small pellet of red that made his wand spark and shake almost uncontrollably as it launched from its tip.
There was a scream and the sound of something heavy and wet falling to the floor.
Blaster shots pinged all around him and Harry couldn't help but wonder how much of his life would be about hiding behind something solid as someone or something tried to kill him.
It's not like he could have moved from his corner, after all, though there were two hallways either side of him he would probably be shot in the back the moment he tried to run.
He couldn't help himself, after all he'd been through, a hysterical laugh bubbled up from inside him. It wasn't that he wanted to laugh it was more that he couldn't stop and this seemed to really unnerve Ragro.
"Are you crazy kid! Why won't you just die!" Ragro screamed.
Crazy kid? He could be a crazy kid, thought Harry, it's not like he had another choice apart from dying anyway.
Right then, possibly about to die for the umpteenth time, Harry had a moment of absolute clarity that simultaneously lasted for an eternity and less than a second. The kind of clarity that came with a spine-tingling shiver, a dry mouth and the sudden awareness of a full bladder.
I am always reacting, he thought, ever since I got here I am always going with the flow of events. Even in trying to find his way home I have so far only taken what was offered with very few improvements.
Well no more.
He decided that if he survived here he would actively put his affairs in order and hunt for his home with every idea that he could muster and not just those presented to him. Until he could go home he would find a place in this strange universe and, more than that, he would prosper here.
Left buried deep in his mind was the idea that he would never get home.
In one fluid motion he stood up.
Oh well, Harry mused, it was time for something stupid. Even as it occurred to him that Nyx might have had a point about carrying a weapon.
"Protego" Harry pushed almost every last bit of magic that he had left in him at that moment into his shield hoping only to outlast the blaster that was raining red bolts of death around him.
Thankfully the shield bloomed, a soft blue, protecting him from certain death but all the while draining him of his energy.
Under the constant barrage of fire the shield held. Holding that shield soon became the whole world for Harry, he lost all conception of time and as he sank to one knee, he knew only what it felt like.
His lungs felt like they were on fire, every breath was raw, but at the same time, it felt like his lungs were breathing in a thick suffocating syrup that surrounded his body.
He was covered in sweat and grime and had every reason in the world to give up. A very large part of him wished he could, he wished that he would just give up, give in to the sweet release of death and simply admit that he was only a young traumatised kid far out of his depth.
The odds were good that almost anyone would have given in at that point. They would have consoled themselves with the fact that they had done their best and that they had never really stood a chance anyway.
Well, he was not just anyone.
He was Harry Potter and aside from needing to go home, aside from his friends, aside from his need to see Luna again he was, at his deepest core, a stubborn son of a bitch. He simply was too much of a survivor to die here no matter how much he might actually want to.
Even as each blast hit the shield like a boulder and made him sweat with every gut-wrenching blow even as his mouth formed a silent snarl.
His body demanded that he live even as his mind felt the agony of his magic being syphoned away down into what was ultimately a ridiculous defence.
Eventually Harry's perseverance paid off as, instead of a multitude of blows to his shield, Harry heard possibly the sweetest sound in all of existence. The dull click of a trigger being pulled on a spent weapon was, to him, like angels singing from the heavens.
Gasping so hard he almost cried he let the shield drop even as his wand fell from his numb fingers.
"Well kid... You really are special. Just be glad I'm not a slaver or you'd be some Hutts curiosity next week" said Ragro even as he threw his blaster away and drew a wicked looking vibroblade. "Oh well it doesn't matter"
Harry had no wand in hand and barely enough energy to lift his head to look the Rodian in the eye, let alone fight back against the advancing figure who clearly wished to kill him. All he saw was his own death advancing upon him with nothing left for him to do.
No. Not today.
Instinctively he threw his mind at the wannabe murderer and using Legilimency crushed his psyche like crushing a grape in his fist.
Both Ragro and Harry collapsed.
One was a vegetable never to get up again and soon to be eaten by Laigreks and the other was almost crushed under the weight of information that was rushing into his mind filling it with new knowledge and new ideas.
One month later
Harry finished packing his satchel.
The same one, he thought wistfully, that Luna had given him before he walked through the Veil. She had also, it appeared, been able to put an expansion charm on it as it was able to carry a lot more than it should.
Apart from his clothes and his haul from the Temple the satchel included a credit chip with just under 7,000 credits on it. As it used to be Ragro's he knew the security codes and had no problem in taking or rather stealing it, after all, he was going to kill him.
While taking a final look around the room Harry couldn't help but reflect on the last month. He knew that the next time he would be back would be for his clone in under a year and, if that thought was not crazy enough by itself to either break or hone him, everything else that had happened was.
In this last month, he had truly allowed himself to grieve for Sirius while under the watchful gaze of the dispassionate droid (who he had finally named Minnie as he couldn't keep calling it Droid forever).
It was in expressing his grief that he found his first moments of true peace in this strange new place.
Often he would lay, wrapped in a blanket, against the door of the room that had become Sirius's Tomb and talk, into the empty night.
It did not matter really what was said, sometimes it was about days Harry had lived without Sirius, sometimes about days he wished he had lived with him. Occasionally nothing was said at all and he just rested against the door, unable to express the depth of loss that filled him because to him he hadn't just lost his Godfather as he was but also as he should have been if the world were fairer.
He also spent time coming to terms with what he had done to Ragro and, the surprisingly much more difficult task, of integrating his knowledge while stripping away the personality remnants using Legilimency.
After all, Harry acknowledged at the time, there was no point in gaining knowledge if it led to an identity crisis or a split personality. That was not to say he was remotely tempted to try it ever again.
The instinctual attack, such as it was, made the enemy's mind collapse in on itself in a very unpredictable pattern.
This meant, that while Harry could absorb memories, the mind that he was connected to was collapsing and dying while he was doing so. For that reason alone Harry thought the price was too high.
It wasn't just that he'd made Ragro as much of a vegetable as Neville's parents or that he had simply left him to die (Harry considered it a mercy he did not deserve especially after seeing some of Ragro's darker memories) so that the laigreks ate him before some vengeful soul came upon him for all the horrible things he had done.
The main reason he didn't want to do it again, however, had nothing to do with morals or the quality of mind that he would go into.
The reason that he wouldn't do it again was that he felt him start to die, they were connected like a computer downloading from the Internet, and as the brain started to collapse Harry felt it as if it were his.
Every millisecond felt like a month… followed only by the deep hollow and gnawing emptiness where a living mind used to be and one that hungered to take him with it.
Not something he wanted to do again.
After he was able to reconstitute the knowledge into some sort of useful order he found that he had small nuggets of useful information, locations of black market dealers spread throughout the Republic, names of Bounty Hunters and Assassins, both those to hire and those to avoid as Ragro knew them.
More importantly for his immediate needs was the fact that he could now read the common tongue, as well as its written form that was called Aurebesh, he even learnt that the other language wasn't called English but was called the High Galactic alphabet and it was possibly the older of the two.
It was also a lead.
Harry found it highly unlikely that two societies that had no contact with each other would form the exact same language. To him, this meant that either someone had visited Earth without anyone knowing or someone from Earth had spread out to the stars.
Aside from his clothes and loot the only other things that were going into the satchel were the two books Luna had left for him. The wand pieces and electronic copies of Luna's books were going to be left behind with Minnie.
Luna's choice in books was more than a little strange.
There was no great treatise on Battle Magic, no super locator spells or notes on the Fidelius Charm. They weren't even books on things like the animagus transformation or apparition which (to his chagrin) he still couldn't do.
Although he did concede it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to do that with no major accidents without many detailed books or teacher and so was probably a lost cause anyway.
The titles of the two books that Luna sent with him were A Complete Guide to Basic And Common Runes as well as Rituals And You: The Sacrifices Of The Permanent Path. He did have to say that despite being befuddling reads they were at least interesting.
Basic Runes was what you might expect in a guide to semi-permanent or rarely (at least in the basic and common edition the forward noted) permanent applications of the Nordic, Anglo-Saxon and Egyptian runes to greatly improve someone's daily life or at least make it somewhat easier.
Rituals And You, however, was a complete surprise mainly due to the fact that there were no rituals in the book whatsoever.
What it was instead was a guide into the dangers of rituals, not just making your own, but also, rituals in general. There was a reason the book warned why rituals were considered both dangerous and an art rather than a science.
So far Harry understood three things about rituals from the book. First (which appeared to be very simple) you get nothing if you give nothing, second he learned that intent was the largest factor to any ritual anyone would ever make which was why it could not be fully understood in the same way as spells and, most importantly, third he understood that there was so much that he still did not understand.
Quite honestly the idea of rituals unnerved him slightly and without magical books or continuing his magical education, he wasn't going to be casting homemade rituals any time soon or using them to get home.
If they truly were more of an art than science then, Harry pondered, he would be more of a forger then an artist due to his incomplete knowledge on the subject. Still, rituals remained one of the most powerful forms of magic as Harry had read that even non-magicals had participated and affected rituals using that spark of magic that all life possessed.
What he did have was the knowledge of how to use most Republic technology and the items scavenged from both Ragro and Drell's bodies, as it turned out, the poorly executed Cutting Curse had hit Drell in the throat.
Finding answers from and in this world rather than the magical one seemed best at the moment.
It seemed that he was developing a disturbing habit of waking up next to dead bodies though and when he had done so next to Ragro there had been no Minnie to clean up the blood. It was not something he wanted to repeat.
Most of the things he'd gained were sadly either of low quality or too obviously taken from a dead body. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been a problem since their previous owners were criminals who had attempted to kill him.
Unfortunately, Harry would be unable to explain to a satisfying degree why he did not have a birth certificate, was not in any of their computers, and did not even have anything as simple as a record of the ship that he came in on. At least not without giving up the Ruins and all they contained.
In short, if he told the truth people would ask him questions that he did not wish to answer or they would lock him away as a brand new mental patient. Neither of these was an appealing option.
He did get two blasters plus accompanying holsters.
However, when he sold Ragro's basic blaster to Nyx she looked at him with wide eyes that darted to the empty store across from her before moving quickly back to his face.
She said nothing of course, though unfortunately, Harry didn't think he would be getting a dinner date anytime soon. It didn't help that the credit chip used to belong to someone else and clearly, she knew or suspected who it used to be as she nodded somewhat satisfied at it being in his hands.
He had taken her previous advice to heart though and did not sell Drell's blaster, after all, it was a Sorosuub Security S-5 blaster.
From Ragro's memories (he had wanted the exact same model but hadn't had enough money for it) he knew that although it wasn't the best or the most powerful of the heavy blasters on the market it was one of the most versatile with a grappling spike (8 meters maximum length) and a dart launcher as standard. Once he realised what model it was he had, of course, bought a couple of dart canisters from Nyx, although she would only sell him knockout darts.
Gathering his satchel, pocketing his credit chip, and holstering his blaster on the opposite side to his wand Harry moved to leave this place for the next eleven months.
Almost as an afterthought, he took a small handheld market computer that Drell had owned.
It fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and told you the average market price of common and well-known items that you scanned with it.
You never know, Harry thought, when something like that might come in handy. Besides if not, he jokingly mused, where I'm going I might just have to scan everything to pass the time on my very long trip.
On his way out he touched the door to Sirius's Tomb almost in a form of caress.
"See you soon old man" he whispered.
Harry would be gone for almost exactly eleven months and when he returned on his next visit it would be his last.
Managing to hail down a passing speeder a short while later he was able to beg a lift to the local spaceport and finally leave Dantooine and see the rest of the galaxy.
-LAFA-
Striding up to the information and ticket desk he smiled at the middle-aged human typing tiredly away
"One ticket to Nar Shaddaa, please….on the next transport available"
"That would be the Wayward Son" responded the human without even a flicker of interest on his face. "It leaves in one hour".
The clerk then proceeded to hold up his hand for Harry's credit chip not even looking up. Once Harry got his chip back the bored man continued as if reading from a script "The trip will take approximately three weeks. Good day".
On Board The Wayward Son
After just two days Harry was mind-numbingly bored especially with no one to talk to.
It appeared that there was no one who wanted to visit the smuggler's moon travelling from Dantooine but him. Worse the ship was fully automated with exceptionally cheap and simple droids.
That didn't mean that he hadn't enjoyed the first day of quiet, casually leafing through the two books Luna had given him and simply resting in his bunk.
By rest, of course, he meant no life-threatening situations. He began to realise however that travelling in space alone without anything to do and no one to talk to was a bit like solitary confinement. Harry was many things but he was, more often than not, an action or task oriented person.
As he didn't feel like exploring a small, almost derelict, transport Harry tried to re-read his books.
That did not last long and he quickly through the books back into the bag in frustration. Just as he was about to flop onto the bed and be resigned to boredom Harry heard a clatter and looked down.
The market computer, he thought, perhaps my joke had some merit after all he thought.
Oddly enough, according to the market computer, the two books were worth around 800 credits each as, although they were from an unknown world, books in general were important historical artefacts. Though the cheeky machine did flash the words subject to further evaluation.
The lightsabers were worth a lot more around 3,000 each meaning Harry could expect around half that. This would mean a total profit of between 14,000 and 21,000 for the lightsabers alone if he sold them.
The big surprise was the Statue however, it was called Ulric's Folly according to the computer, and depicted a man, head half bowed holding an unlit lightsaber looking sorrowfully off into the middle distance.
The computer screen produced a green light followed by the word masterwork and then a price of 16,000 credits for the four-kilogram statue, which was made all the more impressive as the statue itself was about the size of Harry's forearm and made of a metal called Phrik.
From his acquired memories, Harry knew that Phrik was a rare metal alloy famous for being very resistant to lightsabers and was considered very hard to destroy.
"I wonder" Harry mused aloud "Gemino". After a bright flash of light, Harry proceeded to scan an almost identical statue. Red lights and the word forgery, as well as advice to contact local security, was not very encouraging to him.
Maybe making a statue was too complex for the Gemino Curse and that's why it was called a curse people kept trying to copy complex things and got poor results.
Harry closed his eyes and concentrated, less on the shape of the statute but rather on his memory of the feel of the metal and the tactile sensation of it absorbing the heat from his skin.
"Gemino" he whispered eyes still closed and focusing on the memory. He opened his eyes to find a rough lump of Phrik weighing only a kilogram and, as he picked it up, it did feel right. There was just one final test, he thought, waving the computer over the new lump.
The computer flashed green and showed the words Phrik and 200 credits.
Harry sat down heavily, that had taken quite a lot out of him and, wiping the sweat from his brow, he couldn't help being pleased. He needed to find out how much of that metal he could make and the minimum amount of magic that would be needed.
If he could get the energy low enough he might be able to finally start implementing his ideas of finding and hopefully getting home.
He grinned.
Finally, he had something to do.
Six Months Until The Clone Matures
After buying necessities (including a top of the line false history that stated he was born in Nar Shaddaa) and spending even more on designs for a pilot/explorer droid and a custom long range searching craft Harry was almost broke again as he simply couldn't make enough Phrik by himself to keep up with the costs.
On the other hand, he now had a personal history that would surpass all but the most microscopic of searches.
He rented and lived in a well to do area of Nar Shaddaa (if there was such a thing) and had bought several of his newly designed pilot droids as well as the long-range crafts uploaded with the projected life cycle of the solar system and sent them off into the unknown regions looking for his home or some hint of it.
Included in that search was a directive to search for any hint of the High Galactic Alphabet, a language that could be related to it, or it's possible roots.
He was only able to equip two before he ran out of money.
That was three months ago and in those next three months he had become intimately familiar with unspoken lessons of Nar Shaddaa and had begun to accept them.
The lessons, such as they were, were very simple. First and foremost you had to protect yourself because otherwise you would be dead and can do nothing at all. The second lesson was to protect what was important to you above all else (which Harry took to mean the people he cared for and getting home) and the last was really a lesson that threaded throughout the others and informed your every action.
This lesson was that you can help others or help yourself, never both, and to try to do so was to court a quick death.
All of that was important in that it helped to explain why Harry, at that point three months ago, had done what any capable person living on Nar Shaddaa would have done.
He had found the nearest Hutt who wasn't considered completely untrustworthy, this one was called Ziya, a young eager slug that was desperate to make a name for itself and who paid well.
For the next three months it has gone quite well consisting mostly of some fetch and carry work (though he made it a point never to ask what was inside), occasionally a little intimidation but in all honesty that was about all.
It also allowed him to get some experimental flash training (thankfully Legilimency allowed him to avoid the serious pitfalls of that method of learning) and gain some much-needed skills that he thought necessary not only to survive but thrive. This included marksmanship and weapon care, basic piloting, basic maintenance, finance and (quite illegally) slicing to name but a few.
Though flash training was ordinarily for clones (being the memories of the original genetic template) on Nar Shaddaa anything could be attempted at least once and there was a thriving black market of 'donated' memories.
It did, however, mean that the mental problems that you were likely to get became a near certainty (Harry was never more happy to know Legilimency to avoid that particular problem) and if the doctor was a bad one you could easily die from any number of brain traumas. Harry did not pick a bad one for such an experimental procedure.
He also did not fall into the basic trap of resting on his flash trained skills instead he practised them (or at least the marksmanship, basic finance and slicing) as much as he could, first to alleviate boredom, then as a mental exercise and finally as a point of pride.
Though if Harry was honest, even with flash training, he was a very poor slicer as he simply didn't have a knack for machines.
He spent the last of his money on bribing a Republic Committee to give him (or rather a company he owned called Potter Industries) the right to colonize, terraform and mine a single planetary system in the Unknown regions assuming that he could find a safe hyperspace route and also a useful system.
That single bribe alone had eaten over 70% of his profits and the license itself had to be used within a year or he would have to bribe them again. The only valuable things that were left in his satchel were the lightsabers and Luna's books.
He had a plan for the former and would never sell the latter.
Now he was back in Ziya's dark hole (or as the Hutt called it a Mansion), standing before the driven and overeager slug looking for more work.
It was not I disliked Hutts, he thought, it is more that they are concerned only with the appearance of great power and collecting personal wealth for their pleasure. Even Ziya's Mansion was dark, dank and depressing despite the rooms being cavernous, the music very loud and the drink very cheap.
It could have also been down to the fact that apart from Ziya's business associates (of which he supposed he was one) the most common sentients in the room were slaves of both genders generously provided by the Snow family for a 'modest' fee of course.
"I am sorry James" Harry had no doubt that not only did Ziya know that name was false but probably knew his real name as well, after all, Hutts may be slugs but they survived by being shrewd. "I have none of your usual work available".
This was bad, Harry thought, without regular work, I will be evicted, become homeless and most likely die from a knife in the back which is often called 'natural causes' in Nar Shaddaa.
Worse, looking at the Hutt's face it (Harry had never worked out Ziya's gender nor did he care to) knew that and was most likely pleased to have him over a barrel. He would not be surprised to find out that Ziya knew exactly how much money he had in his bank account, how much his rent cost and probably a whole lot more besides. "I do have special work for you though".
He knew what Ziya wanted.
Assassination.
The Harry of a year ago would have screamed a denial, killing in combat was one thing murder was another. The Harry of six months ago would have pondered (and had done so twice before already) the request and eventually decided against it.
This Harry had lived on Nar Shaddaa for six months, he had breathed the planet's air, he had seen the very rich and the starving poor, the favoured and the dregs, the survivors and the lost.
He knew the lessons of Nar Shaddaa even as Ziya sweetened the pot "It pays 25,000 credits"
"Who do you want me to kill?"
Ziya smiled.