Chapter Twenty-Two: Staying Warm on Hoth

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: Review responses for Chap 21 in my forums as normal.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Staying Warm on Hoth

When Harry got back to the tents, the sound of women's laughter could be heard up and down the corridor. More than a few Alliance personnel stood about in the narrow hall with suspicious smiles or confused expressions.

"Excuse me, coming through. Excuse me," Harry said. With that didn't work, he charmed himself into looking like a troll and shouted, "Everybody move!"

Terrified base personal scrambled out of the way, only to see a once again normal-looking Harry step through. He stepped at the tent entrance and called, "Are you decent?"

"What if we said no?" came the response.

"I'd probably come in faster."

Accompanied by the laughter his quip prompted, Harry stepped into a tent that held all of the witches left in his squad, and a patently drunk Leia draped haphazardly over a couch guffawing at something. Maria, stone-cold sober, looked up at Harry and winked.

"First time I've seen her in a year," Harry said, not bothering to hide his irritation, "and you get her drunk?"

Madam Malkin fell off her chair laughing in delight.

Leia managed to roll her head toward him cheeks flushed bright red, and the loops of her hair mostly undone. "Harry, you beautiful man! Men... Are there two of you?"

Madam Malkin just fell over flat on the floor, laughing so hard she couldn't even sit up any more. With a sigh, Harry cast a feather-light charm and scooped the drunken princess up. "I will make sure Vernan puts you in the worst assignment in the galaxy," Harry told Maria.

"It's still worth it," his XO said with one more wink. "Go put the princess to bed, Potter. I'm sure everyone will…"

Harry dropped his cloak and silenced both himself and Leia. Maria stomped her feet. "That's no fair, Potter! Getting laughed at is half the fun!"

He hit her with a clown charm, and then accompanied by Maria's shrieks, levitated her out into the hall where she started cursing virulently in Portuguese. The poor Alliance personnel had no idea what to make of the sight of the newcomer dressed up in a classic 20th Century Clown costume complete with wig, bulbous red nose and floppy red shoes.

Harry, meanwhile, made a line-of-sight apparition past the main crowd. "Leia?" he asked, safe behind the silencing charm that prevented others from hearing them.

"What, Harry?"

"Where are your quarters?"

"Officer's quarters are next corridor down, number 617B." She snuggled up to him, and then wrinkled her nose. "You smell bad."

"It's been a while since I took a bath," he admitted.

Despite his smell, she snuggled up against him. He felt a strange humming in the Force from her, but was more concerned with getting her back to her quarters without tripping. He finally found it, and with only a little prompting she put her fingers to the security reader.

The entire cabin looked only somewhat larger than his cupboard under the stairs. He did like the insulated nest that was obviously her bed, though. With a disappointed sigh, he walked her to her bed and started to lay her down, but her arms remained firmly around his neck and pulled him down until she kissed him.

He knelt down to keep from falling, but enjoyed the lingering, wine-flavoured kiss. When they parted, her cheeks were still red as she stared up at him with an intensity he had not seen since that wondrous night when Ginny stayed over with him for the very first time.

"Don't go," Leia said. She did not whisper, but the sound was barely audible.

"You're drunk, Leia."

"Not anymore," she said, a tad smugly. "Jedi can control the chemicals in their blood stream."

Harry hadn't made it that far in his training. "Really? That's neat."

She pulled him down and sat up at the same time, wrapping her arms tighter around his neck while kissing him until their tongues clashed. "Stay," she said again. "Force, Harry. I've been waiting a year. Please stay."

"Well, if you put it like that…."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

He was just as warm as she imagined. With his body pressed against hers so close there didn't seem an inch of skin that was not touching, and his arms tight around her stomach, he warmed her better than anything on Hoth.

She lied to him a little about the wine. She still felt dizzy from the horrid swill the witches fed her. Being raised on the noble house of Organa, she was accustomed to the finest wines in the galaxy. The vinegar they fed to her was strong but so new as to almost be undrinkable. But she drank it anyway because in all her life she'd never had other women like that try so hard to make a connection with her.

It felt exhilarating and more than a little frightening that these women cared so much for Harry that they felt it their duty to vet Leia as a potential girlfriend.

Girlfriend…

She pulled his arm up closer under her modest breasts, intimately aware of the brush of his fingers against them. Winter told her the first time usually wasn't that great. "You build up this huge fantasy where everything is perfect and feels incredible and then reality sets in," her childhood friend and confidant said. "Just don't go in expecting fireworks that first time, and you'll do fine."

Only, there were fireworks. Maybe it was because Harry was older, but he seemed to know exactly what to do; where to touch ... Where to kiss… She was fairly certain he was using magic a couple of times, but she could not argue with the result. By the time they finished, she felt faint, wrung out and yet wholly and unimaginably satiated.

And now he clung to her, keeping every part of her warm.

The peace ended when Harry's arm and leg suddenly jerked, so hard it hurt. "Attan," he mumbled. It was a woman's name, which piqued her interest. But the way he said it wasn't that of a lover. It was a father losing his child.

He jerked again, and she felt a surge of range and anger from him in the Force. Concerned, she turned in the sleeping cradle and said, "Harry?"

Abruptly he woke, and for a brief moment she fully believed he was as old as he said he was. The haunted pain in his eyes was the same she saw in Obi-Wan's whenever he happened to speak of the old Jedi Order.

"Are you okay?"

He blinked a few times before leaning forward to kiss her. "Yeah, sorry... Weird dreams."

"Maria told me what happened. Attan… was she one of your conscripts?"

"Yeah. She was only a few years younger than my daughter, Lily. If I'd just let them all go with the others, they'd still be alive, just like Thrawn said."

"This Thrawn was just trying to hurt you."

"And he did," Harry admitted. "The best weapon is truth, and the man knows his weapons well. I didn't do a single thing truly wrong, and yet the sum total of my actions was thirty young people murdered, and a thousand Wookiees put down like dogs."

Gently she cupped his cheek and studied his features. This close, she saw the faintest outline of an old scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. She studied the dark lines of his brows and the pores on the tip of his nose, until finally she studied the intense green of his eyes. She realized that it looked so intense because there was a thin circle of black around them that seemed to call the colour out even more. It amazed her that this man was almost as old as her father, and yet looked younger than even she did.

"Once, Luke convinced Obi-Wan to tell us about our birth father," she told him, so close she could smell her own breath flowing back from his cheek. "Obi-Wan said that he'd done everything he was supposed to do to raise a Padawan. He listened to the advice of the High Council in raising him. Anakin Skywalker rose up as a hero in the Clone Wars, and it seemed like Obi-Wan had done everything right. Except at the end, when Anakin became Darth Vader and slaughtered the Jedi. He blames himself, but I wonder just what else he could have done. You did what you did, Harry, because you are a good man fighting a good cause. You lost, that's true, but that doesn't make your decisions wrong. If you start to think like that, you'll never be able to go forward again."

He regarded her intently, seeming to devour her features the same what she did his. "If you had a chance to do things over, what would you have done differently?"

Grinning, Leia said, "I would have done this with you the first time I had a chance."

"Well, we can always make up for lost time, I suppose."

She melted into him, and he lifted himself to welcome her. Afterwards, with her resting on top of him and gasping for breath, she said, "Did you ask Ginny?"

She felt him freeze for the barest second, before nodding. "I had to. I couldn't do this with the ghosts of my past holding me back. She knew that too. As much as I loved her, she loved me just as much. And that's why she…" He had to stop speaking as a lump formed in his throat.

Gently, Leia leaned down and kissed him. "I don't care if I get old and you don't. I just want to have you for as long as I can."

He held her half-draped over his body and ran a hand through her long, dark brown hair. "You will, Leia. You'll have me for as long as you want."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

"I am fluent in over six million forms of communication," Leia's protocol droid announced pompously. "This is not a code used by the Alliance."

Obi-Wan tapped a finger against his lower lip. "Should we go check it out?" Luke asked.

"No, I feel the time for that has passed," the Jedi Master said. "Carlist, my friend, we need to accelerate the evacuation plans."

"I concur," Rieekan said. He turned to the tech at the control board. "Give the evacuation order."

"Yes, sir."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

The alarms brought Harry instantly awake. In his arms, Leia tensed as she came awake too. "The evacuation alarm," she said softly.

"Come on, let's take a shower," Harry said. "We don't know when we'll get another chance."

What should have been a slow, luxurious post-coital shower turned into a hasty affair of mutual cleaning before both jumped into their respective uniforms. Harry paused just long enough to hit his uniform with a series of cleaning and warming charms before he said, "Okay, what's scheduled to go?"

Leia pulled out a dozen large plastic tubs. "Everything. Even the shower and bed break down."

"Right. Pack!"

Leia felt a surge of the Force like nothing she felt before, and suddenly her room exploded as every item within it rose up and began flying toward the bins. In less than a minute, the whole room was scoured clean.

"Wow," she whispered.

"Where do we take your things?"

"The bins are pre-labelled. We take them to the main hangar for loading."

She watched as he manipulated the Force again, stacking all the bins and then securing them with what appeared to be a natural fiber rope. A moment later, they disappeared. She followed him into the corridor, and then the next one over where they saw his crew ambling about in confusion.

"Listen up!" Harry shouted when he saw them. "Maria, you're still in charge. Primary objective is to help the people pack and then get out. Each cabin should have pre-labelled bins that need to get to the hangar. You are to evacuate the base and report to General Rieekan or General Vernan. I am going to be taking the assault shuttle for Jedi business, but there's a good chance we'll be returning to Avalon. So, what I need you to decide is whether you want to stay and fight with the Rebellion, possibly for the remainder of the war, or go home. If you decide you want to go home, get to the assault shuttle after you are done helping everyone pack. For now, packing spells and Portkeys, let's move!"

The fifty-six wizards and witches all spread out and started packing individual rooms. Most cabins had several people in them in shared bunks, but even so the magic was intuitive enough to make sure everything went where it was supposed to go. The startled Alliance personnel could only stand by and watch as these strange newcomers took mere seconds to accomplish half an hour of packing each. Harry and Maria came behind them charming portkeys, since that magic was not something everyone could make, and in just minutes the entire corridor was packed.

They moved onto the officer's corridor with the same efficacy, to the point where Rieekan's adjutant screamed about the general's things being stolen. Leia took it upon herself to calm the poor girl.

The magi did not just stop with personal quarters, though. Once they had some familiarity with the base, they began Apparating around it packing things, or levitating heavy equipment, or just in general using their magic to make the evacuation go five times faster than it could have otherwise have gone. There was a chaos to their intervention that threw a kink into Rieekan's tightly organized evacuation plan, but not even the sputtering general could deny just how effective their help was.

"Imperial ships have been detected in orbit," the Command Centre warned over the base intercom. "Drop ships are en route."

Harry, who was port-keying whole star fighters into the beetle-shaped transports, looked over at Leia and said, "How long does that give us?"

"If General Kenobi's plan works, at least an hour," she said.

Harry raised one brow. "His plan?"

Leia smirked. "Well, he couldn't get us a Fidelius charm, but he is a master at old-fashioned sleight-of-hand."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

The massive, box-shaped drop ships released an attack force of nine All Terrain Armoured Transports. The quadruped, 22 meter high behemoths marched over the icy terrain with impunity, while assault shuttles disgorged thousands of Stormtroopers in snow-adapted armour. Their target was the power generator nestled in the rocky hill of an out-cropping rock at the center of a powerful deflector shield.

The rebel defensive line immediately began a vigorous defence, confirming in Major General Maximilian Veers's mind that this was indeed the rebel base. Rebel speeders zipped around the heavily armoured walkers, pelting them ineffectively with laser cannons while the Imperials sat protected behind armour designed to withstand much more powerful cannons.

The defensive trenches the foolish rebels dug provided minimal cover as they desperately fought to hold off the infantry, but with Veers's Walkers coming, they had no hope at all. "Target the power generator," Veers ordered.

A pair of Taim and Back MS-1 fire-linked heavy laser cannons targeted the distant ridges of the power generator which maintained the planetary shield over the base, and with a pair of powerful energy blasts, the generator exploded with a spectacular white-hot flash of white.

He dismissed the shockwave that ran under the ice of his walkers as part of the generators' end. Of course, this was a mistake. While Veers was a talented tactician, like many Imperials he tended to dismiss the environment as something to be overcome. With a fleet of star destroyers at his back, Walkers that were all but impervious and two thousand star fighters at his beck and call, Veers did not care to research the fact that any outcropping of rock on Hoth was in fact the tip of a mountain, since the whole planet was covered in a mile of ice.

If he had known that, he might have had ComScan deepen their initial scan of the surface beyond the twenty feet of ice deemed safe for AT-AT travel. Obi-Wan Kenobi certainly did.

The explosions that Veers assumed to be a shockwave from the destruction of the power generator was in fact a series of explosions across the bottom of the natural ice bridge that covered an underground lake formed by geothermal vents. The ice, which was still very thick, withstood the initial explosions. Additionally, AT-ATs were equipped with repulsor coils to reduce the behemoth's weight by half of that.

Even half the weight of the 20 meter long, 22 meter high monster was significant.

Within the safety of the AT-ATs cockpit Veers could not hear the spine-tingling snap of the cracks that caused snow to sift down between them. The troopers on the ground, however, paused almost as one despite being in the middle of a fierce battle. Behind their white armour, clones and conscripts alike looked up and saw the Rebels running away from their defence line, while the ice underneath their feet began to shake and vibrate with each pounding step of their walkers.

"Make for the rocks!" one smarter than average officer shouted.

It was too late.

With a resounding roar, the ice bridge gave way.

"What the devil!" Veers shouted as he felt his AT-AT falling out from underneath him. Behind him, the other eight Walkers also fell through the ice bridge, along with almost the entirety of Vader's 501st Legion, and the four Juggernaut heavy assault vehicles that were bringing up the rear of the attack force with additional troops. Veers shouted into his com at the Fleet, warning them, even as his vehicle dropped the hundred and twenty meters into the cold depths of the ice-melt.

Veers would never know, given the fact that he broke his back in eight places when the AT-AT hit the surface of the under-ice lake, that, in fact, the true rebel base was on the other side of the planet without any shielding, and with an underground power generator invisible from orbit.

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

"Kenobi's pretty smart," Harry admitted as they finished loading up the rest of the base. They left only minimal supplies behind—items so specialized to Hoth's climate there was no benefit or room to take them. Already the speeders were coming in and docking directly with the last transports in the hangar.

The pilots ran toward their fighters. Harry, taking Leia's hand, Apparated her to his newly claimed Heavy Assault shuttle. "Call Luke and Obi-Wan, we'll go to Adega in this," Harry said.

Leia nodded her agreement and tapped her wrist communicator. "Luke, Obi-Wan, we're going to use Harry's shuttle. Can you make it?"

"I'm leading the escort, but I'll join you once we're away," Luke commed back.

Obi-Wan, meanwhile, calmly climbed up the ramp with just a single bin of personal possessions in his arms. "Princess, it's good to see you safe."

"You too, General,"

Maria appeared with a pop. "Potter, the others have decided to stay and fight with the rebellion."

"Good," Harry said. "As soon as we're back, we'll be joining you."

With a wink at Leia, Maria stepped forward and hugged Harry. "Be safe. You might be an idiot, sometimes, but you're our idiot."

"Actually, I'm her idiot now," Harry said with a thumb toward Leia.

"You have been for a while. Just be safe. Good luck, Princess. Remember; if he gives you any trouble just slap the back of his head once or twice." With that, the former Auror spun and popped away.

"Remarkable," Obi-Wan said of the magic.

Harry, meanwhile, turned and ran toward the cockpit of the shuttle to start warming her up. Leia and Obi-Wan both made their way to the cockpit moments later as all the ships in the base began lining up for the evacuation. The ground began to shake as the Empire opened an orbital barrage against the false base miles away.

"I hate to leave the ion cannons behind," Leia fretted. "It took a lot to get a hold of them."

"They're far too large to move," Obi-Wan pointed out. "And we don't have any ships large enough to employ them regardless. If they save our lives today, they will have served their purpose."

The control panel began to blink. "That's the signal, here we go," Harry said.

Ahead, two X-wing fighters shot out of the hangar on either side of the first transport. Then the next set went, followed in quick succession by a third, fourth, fifth and sixth transport. Harry took the shuttle out right behind the last transport, flanked by the remainder of the X-wings and a whole squadron of Y-wings.

The moment they cleared the hangar, the ships all pitched almost straight up and burned at full thrust at an angle away from the Imperial Fleet, which instead of assuming standard blockade formation clumped together for concentrated fire against a patch of snow and rock they thought was the rebel base.

Despite the deception, the Imperials responded very quickly as three Imperial-II class star destroyers broke formation and began moving to stop the fleeing convoy. Only then did the ground-based v-150 Planet Defender ion cannon unleash the full fury of its power.

Massive bolts of energy just sheering into the visible spectrum as violet light slammed into the first of the three star destroyers with devastating effectiveness. More shots quickly disabled the two other destroyers before the obscenely large Executor class star destroyer obliterated the cannon and the small squad its volunteer operators in a barrage that removed the last traces of the rebel base from Hoth.

"I do believe Darth Vader is on that ship," Obi-Wan said.

"Too bad we don't have time to say hello," Leia said sarcastically.

The damage from the ion cannons was done. Harry couldn't help a happy whoop as they cleared the atmosphere sufficiently far enough away from the Imperials and their thousands of fighters that there was no danger of being caught. The rebel convoy immediately split apart the moment they cleared Hoth's gravity well.

In fact, the formation looked a great deal like a peeling flower as each transport and its escorts peeled off of their original course, almost all at the same time, and shot into hyperspace. Harry did the same when his time came. Leia entered random coordinates for a short, misleading jump, and moments later the universe spun into a tunnel of blue as they escaped.

"I think we probably pissed your dad off," Harry said to Leia.

"Oh, of that I have no doubt," Obi-Wan said. "All in all, I must say that was a very successful evacuation. Rieekan is a good man, but sometimes he is unwilling to accept the realities of asymmetrical warfare. We cannot defeat the Empire in a set battle. So, instead we make them bleed when we run. Once I pointed that out to him, he made it happen very quickly."

"Smart man," Harry agreed. "Alright, we're clear of the system. I'm dropping us out of hyperspace."

They emerged into real space, and just a few minutes later were joined by a lone X-wing fighter. "Luke, don't dock your fighter yet," Harry said.

"Right," came the response. "That thing is a lot bigger than I realized. It could hold all of Rogue Squadron!"

"It is pretty big", Harry agreed. "I'll let you know when to dock in a minute." He turned and looked at Obi-Wan and Leia. "Well, we have no food stores," he said. "The ship had only a few emergency rations when we stole it. We're also running a little low on fuel, since it was not a maintenance priority. I also know for a fact that Yoda has three Padawans, at least one of whom is also ready for a lightsaber crystal.'

"You're suggesting we go to Avalon?" Obi-Wan asked.

"At first, yes. We go, pick up Tim or whomever else Yoda wants to come, and then we go looking for a place to stock up and refuel."

Obi-Wan was looking through the ships navicomp. He apparently found what he wanted and grunted. "Adega is located in the outer reaches of the Moddell Sector. Hyperspace travel there is stop-and go because of the lack of a lane and gravitational anomalies. We're going to need fuel. But there is a mining world called Kuna's Tooth that might do nicely. It is sufficiently far enough away from the military outpost at Annaj that it is more a miner's town than an army one. We should be able to resupply there after we pick up our additional passengers."

"Okay, next question. Do we have any money?" Harry asked.

"That should not be a problem," Obi-Wan said.

"The Alliance maintains several front companies to launder our funds," Leia explained. "They're legitimate corporations, so we should be able to access enough for what we need. Plus my father made sure our family assets were well-diversified all over the galaxy. Not even the Emperor would have been able to find all of our wealth."

Harry nodded, grinned, and said, "Then Kuna's Tooth it is. And after that, Adega. I want that laser sword. But first, Avalon. And to get to Avalon, we need a Fidelius Charm. And for that, we need a secret keeper outside the charm. This is where Luke comes in."

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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.