Chapter Ten: Avalon

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: Chap 9 review notes in my forums. As some have commented, things went fast in the initial chapters. Now we're in the middle, and I'm going to slow things down to give our characters a chance to recover a little. Plus, as one reviewer noted, it's just fun to set up a new world!

Chapter Ten: Avalon

The holographic image of Leia looked so small, and yet her voice came through strong and clear. "I'm glad you were able to recover as many people as you did," she said. "There is a world that might work. There were several Alderaanians in the Alliance and abroad in the galaxy, so we'll be able to save at least some of our culture. We've already narrowed down a list of potential planets to colonize after the war."

Harry was virtually alone in the bridge of the Phoenix, since the tiny bridge crew was sleeping while the ship orbited the dying ember of Earth. "Can you send me the list?"

"I just did," she said. Indeed, a second holographic display appeared with a list of worlds and coordinates. "Some of those worlds were under consideration for bases but were deemed unsuitable due to being too remote to stage military operations from. But that's actually perfect for a refugee colony."

Harry couldn't help but notice all the worlds were temperate planets with lush greenery and oceans. "I think given my people's recent history, it would be best to be apart from as many neighbours as possible. If you let me know what the best choice is for New Alderaan, we'll look at the rest."

Even as small as her image was, he could see her smile. "The second on the list was our best choice. It was most similar to Alderaan. The next choice had flora and fauna that made the scouting parties uncomfortable, so it's been listed as a possibility only. None of them have been colonized or mined yet."

"Thanks, Leia. How are you doing?"

"I've been busy," she said honestly. "Master Kenobi has been showing Luke and I things about the Force, and I have to admit it's amazing. Plus General Dodonna is thinking about moving the base from Yavin. That's actually standard procedure—we move our primary base every six to to twelve months."

He smiled. "Well, let me know. Oh, and since I haven't really had a chance to talk to you, thank you for getting me this ship. I know it's a pile of rust, but it saved a lot of people. They were literally on the verge of starvation and freezing to death when we arrived."

"I just wish I could have given you a full crew," she said.

"I already have people going through training. By the time we get them settled, I'll be able to release the Alliance crew."

"Good. Good. Did you find anyone?" She asked the question diffidently, but even through the holonet and thousands of light-years, he heard the tiniest hint of vulnerability.

"Actually, yes. I found my godson and one of my brothers in law and his family. Two brothers in law, in fact. It was more than I thought I would find. I also found a pair of dear friends, but they couldn't leave. I'm sure they've died by now."

"Oh Harry, I'm sorry."

"They died heroes, saving everyone else," Harry said, touched by her grief. "As soon as we get our civilians settled, I'll make contact again. This ship is going to need a major refit to be of any use, and I don't even know how to begin something like that."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere," Leia said. "I hope I see you soon."

"Yeah, me too. Take care."

"May the Force be with you."

The image blinked out. "Who was that?"

Harry blinked and looked up to see Charlie Weasley in the open door of the bridge. Technically the door was supposed to be closed when not in use, but in reality it jammed and no longer closed at all.

"Would you believe a space princess?"

"I'm on a spaceship, why not?" Charlie walked all the way in. He was still too thin. The Alliance had supplied Harry with stolen Imperial field rations as part of his relief mission, but with twenty thousand starving people, Harry knew the rations would not last long.

Still, Charlie was better fed than at any point in the past year as he walked in and stared at the old, rusty interior. "You know, for some reason I always thought spaceships would be new and shiny. This thing is a pile of shite."

"Yeah, it really is." Harry laughed and ran a hand tiredly through his hair. He needed a shower. "It was a thirty-year-old relic from an old war that was stolen right before being decommissioned. I said I had allies, but I never said they were the ones really in charge. They're a small Alliance of factions rebelling against the same Empire that attacked us. It seems Earth isn't the only world they've destroyed. That Space Princess lost her world only a few weeks ago."

Charlie nodded as he finished his inspection. "So, know where we're going?"

"We have some ideas."

"And then what?"

"Then I formally join the Alliance as a colonel," Harry said. "I'm the Master of Death. If nothing else, I'm really good at sneaking around."

Charlie snorted. "We heard about you fighting the Invaders, Harry. The only victories we had were the fights you were present in, and when we lost you, we lost the fight completely. What happened?"

Looking out of the viewports to the rusted ventral line of the ship, Harry ground his teeth. "I was enslaved with tens of thousands of others to make a big weapon platform for a madman. There were several magicals with me—Oliver Wood's daughter, plus a former Auror I worked with from France. We planned to escape, and got pretty damned close, but the Empire caught us. They were all killed—forty thousand people. The Empire then blew up the whole damned world and threw me in a cell to interrogate me. It was while I was there that I met the Princess. We escaped, and joined the Alliance."

"She's pretty."

"She's half my age."

"Just like Tonks and Lupin," Charlie said. "Only you're not a werewolf and you still look seventeen."

"And I'll look seventeen when she's ninety."

The former dragon wrangler shrugged. "Too deep for me. I'm only alive right now. I might be alive later, but I'm only living at this time, and this place. And I can tell you, brother, loneliness sucks."

"What about Ginny?"

Charlie, like all Weasleys, was a touchy-person. He took Harry's shoulders in his hands, ignoring Harry's obvious discomfort with the contact, and looked him in the eyes. "Gin-Gin is gone, Harry. Mum told us all before she willed herself to die. Gin loved you like crazy, and I know you loved her back, but she's gone now. And if you could ask her, I think she'd tell you to live your life."

I did ask, and she already has, Harry thought. "What about you?" he asked.

"Me? Why, I'm going to join your crew and kill as many of the bastards that hurt my family as I can," Charlie said with a grim smile. "You need a crew for this ship? You'll have one, I promise."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

They called the planet Avalon. It was largely temperate, with large polar ice caps, two small gravity-locked moons whose cumulative gravitational pull added up to a similar tidal effect that Earth had, and it had an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

That atmosphere made the Phoenix shudder violently as it came down on a mesa which overlooked a large flood plain and served as the first in a series of hills and rises leading to a mountain range covered in trees.

Harry Apparated from the bridge, where the Rebel Alliance crew was already packing up to take one of the ship's two shuttles back to the Alliance proper, and found a fight in the cargo hold between the headmistress of the Brazilian Institute of Magic and her supporters, and the Hogsmeade survivors led by the indomitable Rosmerta Christie, who though in her seventies now still looked like a shapely woman just this side of fifty.

Harry tried to hold down his irritation as he pushed and shoved his way between the two parties just as they were about to pull wands. "What the hell is going on?"

"We will not be told what to do by this…this…harlot!" Lady Sofia Conseugo Ramirez declared with a contemptuous wave toward the red-faced Rosmerta. "I am the Headmistress of the greatest school of magic in the world and a sitting member of the Brazilian Magical Chamber of Deputies. I should be leading these people!"

Harry stepped right up to the ancient which, who blinked and stepped back. "You were," Harry said in a quietly grave tone. "Now you're a refugee from a dead planet, just like everyone else."

He stepped back and cast a Sonorous charm. "Listen up! There is no Brazil! There is no England, no America and no Australia. There are no nations any longer. They're all dead, just like all of you will be if you don't realize what's happening. The world out there is untamed and dangerous. There are apex-predators as large and dangerous as dragons running wild. There are bugs we've never heard of and diseases we've never encountered. There are no stores to buy our food or clothes, and no elves to do your laundry or cleaning. There is just us, and what we managed to save when we left Earth. If you don't get that through your heads, you are all going to die."

"Who put you in charge?"

Harry couldn't see who spoke, but it was a young American accent. Before he could answer, though, Charlie Weasley stepped from the crowd and said, "This is Harry Potter, the man who saved your lives! He's the captain of this ship, not to mention Mage General of the ICW. He's in charge because he is. End of story."

"Right," Harry said with a nod of thanks. "Fighting like this is not going to help. Lady Sofia, congratulations, you're on the new Avalon Wizenmeet. Rosmerta, you were a two term mayor of Hogsmeade, you up to play politics some more?"

"Aye, Harry."

"Fine," Harry said. "You're on it too. That's the start of it. You two are the core of the Wizenmeet. I'd like at least three more people on it based on popular election. We'll do that after we figure out how not to starve to death."

With his voice still reverberating through the ship, he said, "First order of business is food! We need to get land cleared, warded and seeded or prepared for our surviving livestock as soon as possible. We need to know if the fauna on this world is edible, and possibly find edible local plants. Our rations aren't going to last long.

"Second order of business is shelter! I know some of you have tents, but those are not going to be enough for everyone. If any of you have received any type of survival training, then you should know the spells to create transfigured shelters. We need shelters for eighteen thousand people. Fancy houses can wait. Right now we need group shelters as soon as possible."

No one spoke. Though, even if they did, Harry's magically augmented voice would have overwhelmed them. "Anyone with warding experience, I want you to find Bill Weasley. He's the scary-looking red head with the drop-dead gorgeous Veela hanging on his arm. He's a veteran Gringotts ward master, and I'm putting him and his wife in charge of laying the wards for the colony. Bill will be in the front right corner of the cargo hold until you all report to him."

Harry looked at Charlie. "This is Charlie Weasley, the former Lead Wrangler for the dragon reserves in Romania. He's also a magical polyglot and served a tour as a deputy ICW Enforcer during the Balkan Coven Resurgence. He's going to do the initial land survey, so we need competent broom riders with any survival skills. He'll be in the far left."

"Finally," Harry said, "Until the initial colony is properly warded, no one under 17 is permitted to leave this ship. If you want to help but don't know how, find me, Rosmerta or Lady Sofia and we'll put you to work. If you don't know what to do and don't want to help, then stay here and watch the kids. There are not enough of us for people to do nothing. That's just not an option anymore."

Thousands of kids groaned, but Harry noticed the adults nodded in agreement.

Harry eventually joined Bill's group, which was a lot smaller than he hoped, but not surprising at all. The art of warding was a difficult one that required years of intense study. Given what small percentage of their population survived, it should not have surprised Harry that only six warders survived, including Bill and Fleur. He did not consider himself a warder, but he knew enough to help in this area.

They left the ship in what felt like an early afternoon day. The temperature was warm but not hot, and from the low, bright green grasses Harry guessed they were in the planetary equivalent of spring.

Charlie's group was slightly larger than Bill's. He led them out on brooms, fourteen in all, and in minutes they were marking the outlines of the future colony with conjured paint. Charlie employed an old trick by magically tethering himself to a point over a mile from the ship and flying in a circle at the end of the tether while marking the ground under him. It created a perfect circle three miles in area.

Meanwhile, Bill was casting spells at the ground while his wife Fleur, Harry and the four others waited. Of the four, only one other was British, while the remaining three were Brazilian. And yet, despite their nationality, they all knew Bill and spoke English, which was considered the lingua franca of the warding and curse-breaking profession following the Second World War.

"How do you want to handle this, Bill?" one of the Brazilians asked.

Bill squatted down and ran a hand through the shin-high grass as Charlie and his group arrived. "Hey, I saw some animals in the grass!" Charlie announced. "Nothing too big, but a few herbivores. Looked like scaly, two-legged deer."

"Stun 'em," Harry said. "Stun as many as you can, drive the rest out. Think your people can conjure up a stable to hold them until we know if they're edible?"

"Easy," Charlie said. "This is just like when we did that job for old man Diggory, remember Bill?"

"Yeah," Bill said, though absently. "Harry, you're a little more sensitive to this. Do you know how to find ley lines?"

Ley lines? "On an alien planet?" he asked aloud.

"Try it."

Harry cast the spell into the soil, which created a magical radar designed to detect other magic. He leaned down and put his hand to the soil just in time to receive multiple sources of magic bouncing back. "Merlin's balls," he muttered. He looked up to see Bill grinning back. "The place is brimming with it. No wonder the Muggle Alliance scouts felt so uncomfortable here."

"It feels a lot different than what we're used to, but there's no denying this world has magic," Bill said with a grin. "You picked a good one, Harry. The magic means we can tap into it for our wardstones."

One of the Brazilians laughed. "That is perfect!" He spoke with only the slightest of accents. "We won't have to power them manually!"

"Is the circle big enough, then?"

"It's big enough for now," Bill said. "I'm thinking initially crop land in the middle, housing around the sides?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. He looked up in time to see Lady Sofia and Madame Rosmerta joining them from the ship.

"What is happening?" the Brazilian demanded imperiously.

"We're discussing the ward structure and layout," Harry said. "Charlie?"

"Yeah, we're going. Come on, boys! Let's go hunting!"

When the broom riders were away, Harry vanished some of the grass to expose the dark rich loam underneath. He drew a circle with one finger. "Charlie's marked out a circular area two miles in diameter. That gives us roughly three square miles of area to work with. So, we're thinking crops and pens for livestock in the middle, housing along the circumference of the wards."

"And there's something else," Bill said. "Harry and I both detected Ley Lines."

"What's that mean?" Rosmerta asked.

"It means, Madame, this planet has magic," Lady Sofia said, at least limiting her contempt to her tone of voice rather than insults. "You are going to tie into it for your ward stones, then?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bill said.

The old witch considered this for a moment before turning to Rosmerta. "My school had a large agricultural component, in addition to various seeds. I propose allowing my students to handle the initial crops. We will plant small crops of all seeds we possess to see which thrive and which do not, under magically accelerated conditions. I propose you handle housing, Madame."

"Right," Rosmerta said. Harry admired Rosmerta because the woman was practical enough to put her pride to one side when necessary. "We can make that work. Bill Weasley, you get your wards laid and have that rogue of a brother of yours mark out where you want things to go, and we'll get on it."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Even with magic, it didn't happen in a day. Creating ward stones was a chore in and of itself. It took another side trip by Charlie's group to the mountains to find suitable stone. They came back levitating a five ton block of granite that Bill and Harry carved with magic into five still significant stones. Both Lady Sofia and Teddy Lupin brought upper-level Ancient Rune students out of the ship under protective escort to watch and learn as the warders carved the warding runes over the stone.

Unlike normal runes, they did not magically charge the stones themselves. Rather, the runes were arrayed to pull on the ambient magic of the world itself. When all five were done, Bill performed a compass spell to find north on the planet, and that is where they buried the first stone. Charlie and his team, meanwhile, hunted and stunned a dozen of the local, large-bodied reptilian herbivores while using noise-charms to scare the rest of the wildlife out of the selected zone. They were nearly done with the last wardstone when Avalon claimed its first victim.

Harry was levitating a stone while the other warders prepared the hole where the last stone would go in a perfectly aligned pentagram around the circumference of the circle when he heard shouting from outside the ward lines. He gently lowered the stone and turned to see Charlie and his team flying toward them with three large, winged things right behind them. Charlie was holding one man in his arms, which slowed him significantly.

Though he hated to use a spell created by Voldemort, in this case height was more important. While the warders stared in surprise, Harry cast the flight spell on himself and rose up into the air. "Get behind me!" he shouted.

The desperate broom riders did just that. As soon as they were clear, Harry cast a wand-ward. It would not last more than an hour, but it was so strong the three creatures, which looked like scaled, winged Great Danes with velociraptor heads, slammed into the invisible wall at full speed.

One of the creatures tumbled to the ground with a broken neck while the other two somehow recovered themselves enough to fly away cawing with loud, piercing shrieks at Harry. When he was sure they were gone, he landed near the creature, which had broken its neck in the impact.

A few minutes later, Charlie joined him with blood covering his shirt. "Philip is gone," he said sadly. "Good man, for only knowing him a day or two. The beasties were hiding in some taller grass a mile or so outside the ward and moved fast. I mean, they were in the air faster than anything that size should have been able to take flight. Did you see their wings?"

Though he hadn't considered it, Harry picked up one of the leather wings and unfolded it. "It's not big enough."

"Exactly. Gravity here seems pretty close to Earth's, which means for something that big and strong to fly, it would need a lot bigger wings. I think it might be magical."

Harry cast the spell, a basic diagnostic spell to tell magic from non-magic. Aurors used it to distinguish magicals from Muggles all the time, since wanted wizards often tried hiding among their Muggle brethren. The spell came back exactly as Charlie expected.

"Well, if our livestock doesn't make it, at least we have potential potion and wand materials," Harry said. "Let's put this beastie in stasis and see if the potions people want to take a look. Did this Philip have family?"

"A sister and a niece," Charlie said. "She lost her husband while trying to escape to Lady Sofia's school. And her only son."

Harry nodded—nearly everyone on board the ship had lost someone. Clapping Charlie on the shoulder, he walked back and helped them plant the final ward stone. As soon as it was covered, Harry felt a faint tingle as the stones magically aligned themselves and began to pull on the planet's previously untapped ambient magic.

"The wards are already charging," Bill said with a satisfied nod. "I'd say it'll be fully charged within a week. I'd say by tomorrow, it'll be strong enough to ward off animals and insects."

"Then let's get some sleep," Harry said with a nod to the setting sun. On the opposite horizon, the planet's two small moons were rising. "We've got a long day ahead of us."

"Right."

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Author's Note: Once again I just wish to stress just how much I appreciate Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading yet another of my stories. As always, they make everything better.