Chapter Twenty-One: Debriefing Princess Leia

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: Review responses to Chap 20 are in my forums as normal. Apparently, looking back on my responses, I'm in a snarky mood. Sorry. Sorta. Maybe a little.

Thanks for reading!

Chapter Twenty-One: Debriefing Princess Leia

With a sigh, Leia gave up on sleep and sat up in her bed. She glanced around her home for the last four months—a single room carved out of the rock-like ice. She slept in a self-contained cradle that provided relatively warmer and moistened air without melting the walls of her only slightly larger room. The medical droids and staff insisted it was essential that all personnel had at least some warm time in the otherwise freezing base, but that meant above 15 degrees. Warm compared to ice, but still cold.

She'd been on Hoth for only four months, and she still wasn't used to the biting cold.

Before coming here, she and Luke actually trained with Obi-Wan on a Force-rich world called Felucia. They hid during that time right under the nose of the imperial garrison while living in the ramshackle hut that once belonged to Jedi Master Shaak-Ti. "If it is enough to hide her, it will suffice for us," Obi-Wan told his two young Padawans.

They spent six months there, training for hours each day. Obi-Wan drilled them both hard because, in his words, they had literally a lifetime of training to make up for. "Jedi training started in childhood," Obi-Wan said. "To start so late is problematic. But if anyone can do it, you two can."

That said, Leia couldn't help but notice that Obi-Wan seemed to spend just a little more time with Luke than he did her. She couldn't deny that Luke was the stronger of the two in the Force, but when she let her guard down she couldn't help but be irked by it. When they sparred, Obi-Wan was teaching Luke more than her; she just picked things up because she was there. Though Luke might have had more natural talent with the Force, Leia suspected she was a touch smarter.

Of course, the flip-side of Obi-Wan's partiality toward her brother was that he didn't seem as concerned about her personal life. For instance, she was fairly certain he knew that Leia regularly used her own counter-intelligence training to slice into the Imperial garrison's holo link to talk to Harry. Sometimes, those conversations were the only thing that got her through the long, gruelling days acting as her brother's sparring partner. When she spoke to Harry, she remembered that one night she spent with his arms around her. Though she was horribly embarrassed at the time, since then she had dreamed of it, and more.

When they finally reached the point in their training when they could mask their Force-presences, Obi-Wan had them join the main Alliance base on Hoth to contribute more directly to the rebel cause. Leia never thought she would find herself missing Felucia, but compared to Hoth, Felucia was a paradise. Still, some nights when she lay shivering under her comforters, she dreamed of how warm her bed would have been if Harry were in it with her.

A part of her wished her aunts were there to talk through her feelings with her, but of course they were with her real father when Alderaan was destroyed. Her childhood friend and confidant, Winter, was on an intelligence mission, so she didn't even have her to talk to. She considered some of the base personnel, but since she and Luke returned she noticed a gulf in how they acted around her that she'd never seen before.

"You move like a Jedi now, Princess," General Rieekan said with the typical, blunt honesty she adored in the man. "They can't help but treat you as one."

Jedi…

She never wanted to be a Jedi. She'd read about the mystic warrior monks and heard her father tell tales about them, but she never had any desire to join their numbers. For all of her hatred of the Empire, she still did not trust the Jedi. After all, why should a religious order have had such profound influence upon the Republic?

But now that she had sensed the Force; let it guide her mind and body, she understood a little more. The Force did not make anyone smart; it did not make silly men suddenly wise. But for those who had the potential for wisdom, the Force made truly wise. In the right hands, she could understand why so many Jedi had such influence over the years.

She was a Jedi. In two days, she and Luke would travel to Adega to build their own lightsabers. Obi-Wan had them both practice disassembling and reassembling their birth-father's blade until they could do it in their sleep. With those blades, Obi-Wan said they would for all intents and purposes be Jedi knights. There were many traditions they did not know, but they were traditions designed to help the Jedi themselves deal with each other. In the absence of other Jedi, such traditions lost some importance.

Shuddering in the intense cold outside of her sleeping cradle, she jumped into the heated sonic shower, and then quickly dressed in her thermal suit before the shivering grew too violent. Her toes were already growing numb by the time she finished dressing.

It was perhaps an hour before First Watch, so most of the base was either still asleep or just waking up. She walked the narrow, ice-strewn halls with a flimsy of their latest requisition requests in one hand and a jumble of thoughts in her mind until she reached the cramped mess hall and saw her brother sitting with Wedge Antilles, his new best friend and second in command of his squadron. The Alliance wasted no time in putting their fledgling Jedi in a cockpit, and Leia had to admit Luke was an extraordinary pilot. The squadron's youngest pilot, Dax, sat next to the two slightly older men listening with a puppy-like expression.

Luke saw her and waved at her, an invitation implicit in his face. In the past year, she had come to know her brother, and saw in him a quality of purity and goodness she had no illusions of possessing herself. Some of it was naiveté, she knew. Part of it was just that Luke was a genuinely good person. His presence in the Force was so pure it made her feel dirty somehow.

Even when he was trying to figure out how to bed a Zeltron mechanic, he somehow remained pure. It just wasn't fair.

She smiled her thanks at him but did not feel like being drawn into a discussion of how ill-suited their speeders were to the cold, which seemed to be all the pilots could talk about. Instead, she fetched some caf and a nausage wrapped in a pastry and sat down at her own table. She would have preferred fruit and yogurt, but a fatty diet was also a requirement to keep them healthy in the bitterly cold climes of Hoth.

She was still lingering on the first item of the list—a request for more thermal women's underwear—when Obi-Wan sat down across from her ten minutes later. The Jedi Master was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the base personnel in his thermal uniform with his general insignia. In fact, Leia was somewhat surprised at how easily Obi-Wan blended in with the military. He only ever wore his Jedi robes when he was off duty or training them. Otherwise, he would wear an Alliance uniform or, occasionally, armour. He had even trimmed his hair and beard to give himself a more martial bearing.

"Leia," he said with a polite nod.

The General had fleshed out a great deal from when she first met him. The man she met on the Death Star was positively gaunt, which made him appear older than his years. In the year since he joined the Alliance, however, he appeared to be eating better and looked once again like a man in his fifties instead of one in his seventies. He had two of the nausage wraps, but drank a thick black tea rather than caf.

The two ate in companionable silence for a few minutes before Obi-Wan said, "Do you wish to discuss it?"

"Discuss what, General?"

Another aspect of their relationship was that he was only a Master when in his robes. Otherwise, Obi-Wan was a general of the Alliance and more immediately a friend of her dead father's. Now, general or not, he stared at her with one elegantly raised brow.

Leia smiled weakly in chagrin. "You felt it too?"

"My dear, I dare say every Force-sensitive in the galaxy felt it. General Potter has quite the temper, and whatever happened last night had him projecting it quite strongly."

Leia shuddered at the visions she had. "Something happened to his ship. It was destroyed."

Ben nodded, accepting without question the fact that Leia's visions of Harry were clearer than his own, or Luke's. He had watched his young Padawan over the past year as she grew closer and closer emotionally with a man she only met in person for just a few days. "Is he alright?"

"He's shielding, so I think so," Leia said. "He was so angry. You've taught us not to give into our anger; that it leads to the Dark Side. And yet…"

"General Potter is not a Jedi," Obi-Wan pointed out. "He's learned some Jedi-skills, but being a Jedi is more than just knowing how to push things with your mind. It is a philosophy and a way of life. Harry is a remarkably powerful man, but he will never truly share the philosophy of the Jedi. More remarkable, though, is that he also shares none of the danger of the Dark Side we Jedi do. The Darkness cannot touch him for it is already a part of his being."

Leia sipped her already cooled caf and nodded, recalling the conversations they'd had after Obi-Wan somehow communicated with Master Yoda through the Force. There was, intrinsic in Harry, a darkness that was not evil, but rather calming and restful. The ancient Jedi Master described it as a cloak of death that wrapped itself around Harry almost as a protective barrier. Though it allowed Harry to access the Force in ways others of his kind could not, it also acted as a filter for the Force and for Harry himself. Even in the midst of his deepest rages; even while using what he described as dark magic; somehow his soul remained untainted.

This did not mean he did not feel, only that the feelings did not scar his soul. And he felt things so strongly, sometimes even during their holo calls Leia felt overwhelmed by him. "He's coming here," she said softly. "I'm going to see him again. It'll be the first time I've seen him since Yavin."

Obi-Wan regarded her intently before smiling over his tea. "Well, I'm sure I could guess what Bail would say."

Leia glared at the Jedi. "I'm twenty years old now, General, and a former sector senator. I'm certainly capable of making my own decisions."

Obi-Wan nodded and finished his second nausage wrap. "Tell me, Leia, did you ever wonder why so many leaders in the Old Republic were so young? For instance, your mother served as a queen when she was only fourteen."

"Of course," Leia said after a moment's contemplation. "You forget sometimes that I frankly had a better education than you did."

Obi-Wan snorted into his caf. "Educate me, then."

"It was a tradition that began with Empress Teta. She was only sixteen when she began the Unification Wars. Many of the great houses of the republic were descended from her, and it became a tradition in her honour to begin public service at a young age. Philosophically it was based on a belief that while the aged were essential for advice and careful thought, the hot blood of youth was necessary for anything to actually be accomplished."

"Perhaps that was true," Obi-Wan conceded. "But despite what General Potter may tell you, with age and experience does come a certain wisdom—a knowledge of oneself that can only be gained with time and perspective. You are a grown woman, Leia, this much is true. You have repeatedly demonstrated acumen and poise in dangerous situations, and your growth as a Jedi has made me quite proud. But in matters of the heart you have led a profoundly sheltered existence. Did you even date boys on Alderaan?"

"I'll have you know that I did date Raal Panteer of the house Panteer."

"For how long?"

Leia blushed. "A week."

At least Obi-Wan had the grace not to laugh at her. "I simply don't want you to rush into anything, my dear."

"So you've given up on no attachments?"

He peered intently at her while cradling his caf. "I'll not lie and tell you the idea does not trouble me. However, I've been told that you and Luke have different destinies. I've not been privileged to know what your destiny is, my dear, so who am I to decide that General Potter is not a part of that destiny?"

Leia opened her mouth to speak when the color faded from her cheeks. She stood; the flimsy fell forgotten from her fingers.

Across the cramped cafeteria, Luke noticed her sudden distraction and called, "Everything alright, Leia?"

She ignored him, and Obi-Wan, and left the cafeteria at a sprint. Alarmed, Luke wandered over to Ben and said, "What's wrong?"

"I do believe General Potter has arrived at the base," Obi-Wan said.

Luke looked confused for a moment before his eyes widened in recognition. "Oh. Well, I suppose it'll be good to see him. I was worried last night when I felt how angry he was. Should we go say hello?"

"I suppose we should at that."

Leia, long-past caring what her brother and teacher thought, ran pell-mell through the narrow icy walls of the rebel base until she emerged in the vast, cavernous space where they held most of their ships. They were already beginning the slow process of dismantling the base for a move, just as a normal precaution.

She saw the shuttle as it flew in through the storm gates of the hangar. It was a white Imperial heavy assault shuttle, the kind that could hold hundreds of Stormtroopers or even small starfighters. The lower stabilizer fins retracted up toward the central fin as landing gear lowered and the ship hovered forward on its repulsor coils alone while being directed by one of the hangar staff toward a free berth.

The shuttle itself would be very useful to the Alliance, Leia thought to herself as she walked quickly across the hangar floor. The craft finally came to a halt and almost immediately the boarding ramp behind the cockpit lowered down. She saw him, walking first down the ramp, as General Rieekan stepped forward to shake his hand. He looked no different than the day he saved her on the Death Star, but that actually worried her.

His eyes were ringed so much they looked bruised, and his eyes carried a haunted look in them. But even so, he was here, now. Seeing him in person was far different than when she spoke to him over the holonet, however. Now that she had Force training, she could feel him. Even shrouded as he was, his power shone around him in the Force. He and Rieekan were speaking sombrely, likely about what happened that previous night, but as she approached his eyes went right to her.

Leia felt something then in her chest—a hiccup—that she'd never felt before. And she felt it because of how he smiled at her. It was a tired, heart-broken smile, and yet it was for her and her alone.

Princess, rebel, Jedi—suddenly none of it mattered as she ran to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him for the very first time. Better yet, he kissed her back and held her just as tightly, and for that one moment they could have been on the golden shores of Chandrila and she would not have noticed…

…Until Luke cleared his throat. "Um, General; that's my sister's face you're sucking off."

Leia sighed as she backed away, and then laughed at the obvious flash of irritation on Harry's face. "Why, are you jealous?"

Luke flushed bright red and stammered.

Leia noticed others emerging from the shuttle. She recognized Harry's second in command, Mara De La Rosa, just from their many holonet conversations. Maria did not look much better than Harry. "Commander," she said with a smile. She noticed the woman had bloody stains on the lapels of her Alliance uniform as well. "Are you alright?"

"As good as can be," the witch said with a shrug. The rest of Harry's crew emerged, and Leia stifled her worry at how few there were.

"As I was saying before other matters came up," Rieekan said delicately, while very carefully avoiding looking at Leia's face, "we've scheduled a debrief for your team at 0900 hours. That should give you a few hours to settle in. I'm sorry for your losses, General, but at the same time I'm glad you made it, and happy to have you here."

"Thank you, General," Harry said. He shook the man's hand before Rieekan left.

He looked to Obi-Wan and said, "General Jedi Master Sir, good to see you. You've done miracles with Leia. I can feel her power in the Force. Luke's doing okay too, I guess."

"Hey!" Luke sputtered, but Leia laughed at the jibe.

"Let's get your people settled, Colonel," she said to Maria. "It looks like they could all use some caf and food."

"Sleep more like," Booker said.

Luke and Obi-Wan followed along as Leia led them through the icy caves. Worried, she looked back at Harry's group and said, "Are any of you cold? We can probably get a few shared thermal suits."

De La Rosa waived the concern away. "Don't worry, Princess. We're all witches and wizards. We're layered in warming charms."

And indeed, the older woman seemed to be giving off an unusual amount of heat. Finally they reached the end of the barracks corridor and the last three rooms remaining. "Maintenance has scheduled a tunneler for tomorrow," she said apologetically. "So it might be tight until then."

"Nonsense," Booker said. "Is it just ice then?"

Leia nodded, and then stood by and watched as four of the older wizards stepped up to the ice wall, raised their wands, and started transfiguring the ice into air. The sudden breeze that swept through the hall smelled stale as gasses caught in the ice eons ago were released. The speed with which the wizards moved through the ice was astounding. They continued the hall another hundred feet, and using the same spacing as the other chambers opened up a series of wholly new rooms in minutes that would have taken maintenance hours to do.

Somehow, Leia got it in her head that Harry was unique in how he manipulated the Force. She knew theoretically that there was an entire race that called themselves mages, but the theoretical knowledge did not have near the emotional impact of watching real magic being performed by someone other than Harry.

In just twenty minutes, they extended the hall by almost a hundred and fifty feet and added ten more rooms on either side. As if that was not astounding enough, several of them removed what looked like folded canvas tents from thin-air that assembled themselves in seconds. The tents were no more than two or three meters square, and yet the fifty-odd witches and wizards easily divided themselves up among the ten as if it were perfectly normal.

In the space of twenty minutes, they were all out of sight.

"How can they even fit in there?" Luke blurted.

"Stick your head in and see," Harry said with a knowing grin.

With a glance back at Obi-Wan, Luke did just that with the first tent and stuck his head in. A second alter he pulled back stuttering. "It's larger on the inside ... A lot larger!"

Disbelieving, Leia stepped into the tent she saw the witches go into, and stopped just inside with a stunned expression. She was not standing in a cramped, two meter square tent. She was standing at the edge of a spacious, canvas-walled home with an interior hall that held at least four bedrooms, with what sounded like flushing toilets and showers, and most important, blessed heat!

Maria emerged from one of the rooms with the vest of her uniform undone to reveal a white undershirt. "I was wondering if you'd come," the Commander said. Seeing her expression, Maria smirked. "It's a wizarding tent. The interior space was magically expanded. We used a lot of these on Avalon before they built regular houses. Come on, I'll show you around."

"But what about…" Leia began.

Maria stuck her head back out into the hall. "Potter, take the boys on a tour. We've having a girl talk!"

"Merlin help us!" came the response. "I'll show them the other tents."

The other witches all poured out of their respective rooms and came into the sitting area around Leia. She looked nervously at the expressions of the older women, but could not sense any hostility in the Force, just protectiveness and curiosity.

"She's quite lovely, isn't she?" one of the older witches said.

"Yes, but I'm rather surprised she doesn't have red hair," another added. "I thought all Potter men had a thing for redheads. Remember Dorea?"

Not wanting to be rude, but neither wanting to be subjected to it, she asked Maria, "Girl talk?"

"We've been mothering Harry for the past year," Maria said. "And the only time we see him smile is when he meets with his godson's family, or after he's talked to you. We can't help but be curious."

"Only thing more nosy than an old woman is an old witch!" one of the other witches said.

"But you don't look old at all!" Leia pointed out.

The witch in question, who to Leia's eyes looked only forty, laughed gaily. "Oh, that's nice to say, sweetie! You remind me of my granddaughter. She had that same spark in her eyes. Poor dear, she and her family were in Diagon Ally when the Imps burned it." She sobered a little and gently touched Leia's shoulders. "I remember the first time little Harry Potter walked into my shop to get fitted for his school robes. I remember when he and little Ginny Weasley came in to be fitted for their wedding robes too. See?"

She shoved a primitive sheet at Leia, but as she looked the princess was stunned to see the two-dimensional figures in fading colour both moving and waving happily. Oddly, the Harry in the photo looked older than now. The woman, though, was breath-taking. She had vibrant red hair done in a tasteful cascade of curls around her shoulders, and a full figure that made Leia somewhat self-conscious. "He looks older."

"It was a glamour charm," Maria said. "He's kind of sensitive over the whole Master of Death thing."

That startled Leia. "Master of Death?"

So, they sat Leia down, pulled bottles of wine from out who-knew-where, and relayed the legend of Harry Potter to the princess. When they were done, the first thing Leia could think of as she looked down at the photo was of when he summoned those ghosts on the Death Star. "I saw her," she told the other witches. "They spoke to him, her and his children. By the Force, I never knew."

"Legend has it that whoever had the Resurrection Stone could summon the spirits of the dead," Maria said. "As far as we know, he's the first to ever unify the Hallows. It's changed him. I've seen him heal from wounds that would have killed ordinary people. He was in London when the first turbolasers hit. It burned his back off, literally. It all healed back in a day and he led the fight against the Empire. He lost, but he still fought. For us, he's our prince, our Captain. He saved us on Earth, and he saved us from the Emperor when we did the Fidelius Charm. He even saved us from ourselves when our people almost started a civil war. He's an idiot sometimes, and he's not always going to win, but I'd follow him anywhere."

"We all would," the witch who handed Leia the picture said. "He's more than just a leader to our people, he's a living legend. We all love him."

"And we want to make sure he doesn't do anything too stupid," Maria added with a telling look at Leia.

The lifetime of royal training made her lift her chin in challenge. "You don't think I'm good enough for him?"

Maria laughed. "Gatinha, I think you may be the only one who is. Who can argue with a space princess who has a laser sword?"

They finished the wine and talked completely through the debrief.

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

"I'm surprised Princess Leia is not here," General Rieekan said.

Harry shrugged. "She got pulled into a gab session by a coven of witches. I'd say we just carry on without her."

"From what I heard, I must say I agree," Obi-Wan said.

The third member of the debriefing session was present by hologram only. General Vernan, head of Alliance Intelligence, was in fact Harry's most direct commanding officer. "You make it sound as if she's lost to us, General."

"Probably until tomorrow," Harry confirmed. "I know for a fact that my XO had several bottles of wine saved up for the occasion of her first meeting with the princess. They've been talking by holonet for a year, after all."

"Very well, General," Rieekan said. "In your own words, please describe the events leading up to the loss of the Immobilizer interdictor craft Phoenix Redux."

Harry described their attack of the convoy and the subsequent destruction of the task force that attacked them. "I think it was a matter of traps within traps," Harry said. "The Empire had some blue-skinned, red-eyed Grand Admiral named Thrawn holding a blockade around Avalon. They used the convoy to lure us away and then set the blockade up when we were gone."

"I'm sorry, General, I was under the impression that Avalon was protected under some form of inter-dimensional cloak," Rieekan said.

"It is," Harry said. "And so was our ship. But this Thrawn was smart enough to figure out that something important was there. Because of the nature of the…cloak, this would have been information he would have had to deduce independently of any previous knowledge the Empire had. He relayed a series of interdictors across the system in a web, and we got caught."

"It was an ingenious move," holographic Vernan said. "Though it's rarely used in an offensive capacity, it is well known that projecting a gravity well onto a gravity well generator creates a violent, sympathetic vibration that can easily rip a ship apart. It only worked, General, because your ship itself was an interdictor."

"And that's what happened," Harry confirmed. "He captured us, then closed the web around us and started shaking the ship apart. Our species-specific means of transportation was somehow blocked by the graviton particles, which according to Thrawn are in all dimensions of space simultaneously."

"Which is also true," Rieekan said. "That is why gravity wells work against hyperspace lanes in the first place. So what happened next?"

"Given that our ship was stuck and we had no means of escape, I surrendered. It was my intent to try escaping later. That was a mistake. Thrawn had our former Imperial conscripts shot as traitors, gassed all the Wookiees both in my crew, and those I saved, and put explosive choke-collars on my original crew. Only then did he transport us off the ship in that shuttle."

"How did you escape?" Obi-Wan asked.

"I switched the collars with the helmets of the Stormtroopers around us. The collars went off, killing the troopers, and from there I gained control of the shuttle. We evacuated the injured from my crew, or those that no longer wished to serve following the destruction of the ship, and came here after several false hyperspace jumps, with the volunteers who wish to join the Alliance directly. I may have severely damaged or destroyed my old star destroyer in the process."

Rieekan and Vernan both looked confused. "While that sounds very tidy, I'm not entirely sure how you could switch collars with helmets."

"It's one of those things like our inter-dimensional cloak that you don't like talking about," Harry said to Rieekan. "Let's call it a Force thing to ease the conversation. The Force was essential in my pulling it off."

Rieekan frowned, but eventually shrugged. "Good enough for me, General. General Vernan?"

"We've heard a few whispers about Thrawn. He made a splash initially, but he was an outspoken opponent of the Death Star and that offended the Emperor. He was sent into the Unknown Regions. He is rumoured to be one of the most deadly tactical geniuses ever seen, and his actions here play that out. Somehow, he managed to find and neutralize an invisible ship filled with fighters capable of teleportation. We'll do additional research, but someone like Thrawn worries me far more than even Vader. Brute force we can deal with. Brute force paired with tactical genius is another story entirely."

"Yeah, I'd have to agree with that," Harry said.

"In the meantime, Gentlemen, I believe General Potter will be joining Commander Skywalker and Princess Leia on some Jedi business," Kenobi said.

Rieekan raised a brow. "I wasn't under the impression you were a Jedi, General."

"I'm not," Harry said with a casual shrug. "But those laser swords are just too awesome to pass up."

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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.