Chapter Twenty-Five: Kuna's Tooth

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

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Chapter Twenty-Five: Kuna's Tooth

"This planet smells worse than it looks," Harry muttered. "Are you sure this is Kuna's Teeth and not Kuna's Arse?"

"It's actually called Kuna's Tooth," Leia said as they walked out into the gloomy mist of an early evening on the rocky, sparse planet. It had an atmosphere of sorts, but it was sufficiently thin that they all wore oxygen masks.

"It's a typical mining planet," Obi-Wan noted. "Those who come here do so for work, not for the lifestyle. Since we received food from your friends, our primary concern now is fuel. Of course, our ship being invisible now to all but us may complicate things, but I believe my contacts are still good. Do you wish to accompany me?"

Harry, though, shook his head. "Not really. I want to check out the sights. You realize that this is only the fourth planet I've ever been on? Okay, fifth if you count Hoth, but I really don't. So I want to walk around a little."

"Keep a low profile," the old Jedi warned. "There is a small but noticeable Imperial element here, and we are all wanted people."

With a shrug, Harry cast glamour charms on the four of them. Obi-Wan was now a rather buff man with a long beard down to his waist that made him look like a mixture of Albus Dumbledore and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Luke had Leia's colouring, while Leia was now blonde. "There, all set. Let's go."

After splitting up, Harry, Luke and Leia walked through Doestes High Port, which was the only official space port on the planet. It did not appear to be very busy, consisting of a small residential section of apartments, several rundown restaurants, a modest shopping district, and the massive warehouses that lined the space port itself.

Harry walked with a bounce that Leia and Luke both noticed. "It feels strange," he finally admitted.

"The planet pulls less Gs than standard," Luke responded with a shrug.

"Oh, is that all?" Harry knew it was pointless to express how odd it felt to him, a man from a planet that did not even have space flight beyond the moon, to a boy raised with the reality of space flight.

What Harry was really interested in, though, were the different sentient beings. There were more than he could count, coming in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. It made him think of all those programs James would make them watch about whether there was life in the universe or not. That there were such vast amounts of life was stunning to the lonely man from a now dead Earth. Harry stared at one of the signs they passed and grinned. "We need to go there."

"A liquor store?" Luke asked. "Why?"

"If you need to ask, you wouldn't understand the answer," Harry assured him. "Come on. It's Leia's treat."

"Why me?"

"It's not like I have any space money."

"This is a bad idea," Luke warned.

"Of course it is!" Harry agreed. "Some of the most interesting times of my life came about because of bad ideas! You're almost family, now, Luke, so it would be remiss of me not to share those interesting times with you."

"That doesn't make it sound any smarter," Luke noted.

Leia just shook her head. "How bad could it be?"

She found out shortly when they stepped through the particle-shielded doors and discovered that it was not just a liquor store, but a bar. In a town like this, there were no such things as zoning laws or restrictions.

Grimy, tired-looking miners of a variety of different species all looked up at the three seemingly young humans who dared to enter such a hive of scum and villainy. "I like it!" Harry declared. "Let's get a drink!"

Harry ignored the steady gazes of the bars patrons as he made his way to the counter. Luke and Leia both scanned the room for potential threats, then gave it up when they realized everyone was a potential threat.

"So, what's good?" Harry asked the barkeep.

"We don't sell kids' drinks," the Chagrian tender grunted.

"That's good. Give me a shot of the strongest swill you have."

The 'man' turned and glared at Harry, then at his companions. On an industrialized world with any semblance of a government, he would be concerned with serving alcohol to minors. Now, he appeared to be contemplating how much it would take to make them all pass out so he could rifle through their pockets. Finally shrugging, the man pulled down a large, smoky-brown bottle from the top of the shelf. Around the bar, chairs scraped against the floor as several miners stood and moved closer to watch.

"Harry!" Leia hissed.

Harry, though, merely watched as the bartender poured a measure of a thick, syrupy black liquor into the shot-glass. Subtly, Harry cast a diagnostic charm on the glass and had to raise an eye brow not just at the alcohol content, but at the other ingredients.

He took it and tossed it down. His throat did not just burn, it blistered. His tongue started to swell and his stomach roiled painfully until his magic swept over where the poison went.

"That tasted like the back side of a Hutt," he said. The Chagrian stared, clearly surprised, while some of the miners muttered. "Do you have anything that isn't poisonous to humans?"

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

Cloaked as he was in Harry's strange magic, it took some doing for Obi-Wan to convince Traelgar that he was in fact the same man who saved the Duros trader twenty years ago. It then took some more talking, and a hefty commission, to convince him to let Obi-Wan rent a fuel truck rather than just hire port authorities to handle it.

Nonetheless, after obtaining what he needed, he flew the hover truck toward the outskirts of the small port town where the assault shuttle sat untouched and unseen by the residents, and in an hour had it fully fuelled and ready to go. With that complete, he started looking for his students and their wayward friend.

If he were honest with himself, Obi-Wan did not approve of Leia's relationship with Harry Potter. This was, after all, the daughter of his Padawan and, all recent history aside, his best friend. In some ways, he felt as much like her grandfather as her mentor. And Harry was, simply put, dangerous. He soundly rejected Jedi philosophy because his power was so alien he was essentially removed from the risk of the Dark Side. However Leia was not, and theirs was a relationship that could easily sour.

But he also knew that there was simply too much of her father for Obi-Wan to have any hope of dissuading her. It amused him that of the two, it was the one who looked like Padme who had Anakin's stubborn strength of will, while the one who looked so much like Anakin had Padme's utterly selfless nature.

Yoda's growing weakness also concerned him. Throughout Obi-Wan's vigil on Tatooine, there was always the subconscious conviction that the venerable Jedi Master would be there when needed. To know that even Yoda was susceptible to the ravages of time left him feeling vulnerable in a way he had not felt since he and Anakin fought on Mustafar.

He was so far along in his musings that he did not notice the singing until it was so loud the building shook. Startled and a little curious, since in his experience singing in port bars was generally not the norm, he peeked through the shielded doorway at a spectacle he would never have imagined.

Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and hero of the Rebellion, was doing a strange line dance with a dozen other very large, grimy, stinky men and laughing while the rest sang a truly inappropriate song. Amazed, Obi-Wan entered further and saw more groups spread around singing the same song while Harry sat at the bar with a tumbler in his hand, a Deveronian passed out on one side and Leia on the other shaking her head in disbelief.

With skill appropriate for his station, Obi-Wan threaded the floor of the establishment until he sidled up next to Leia. "I'm not for sale," she muttered without looking.

"I'm sure I couldn't afford you regardless," Obi-Wan said.

Harry blinked slightly blood-shot eyes over Leia's stooping head. "Ob…ob…Ben! Good to see you. Get this man a drink. That Arkanian brandy should do nicely. Oh, and I'll take three cases to go!"

The burley Chagrian barkeep nodded with what passed as a smile, poured a measure of purple brandy to Obi-Wan, and then began boxing up several cases of similar fluid.

"Leia?" Obi-Wan asked eloquently.

"It was his idea," Leia said, hitching a thumb at her paramour. "He wanted a taste of the local life. He came in here drinking poison that would kill any normal human and drank three men under the table. If nothing else, they're all very happy."

Under his breath, Harry added, "There are two Imperial spies in the room, and another's been hanging around the port. Our friend beside me also said there has been unusual fleet movement in this sector."

Obi-Wan raised a brow, and then looked casually around the room as he sipped the admittedly excellent brandy. Though he was out of practice, it took only moments to identify the spies. "And you staged all this for the benefit of receiving this information?"

"I know it's hard to believe with how young and pretty I am, but I ran a national police department for nigh on twenty years and an international military for ten," Harry said. "Places like this are always the best sources of information. Now, we should head out."

He stood, staggering a little, and said, "We have to go, friends!"

Theatrical moans met the announcement. "But don't despair!" Harry continued. "The next five rounds are on me! And no, the lady still is not for sale!"

A mixture of cheers and moans accompanied their exit, along with three boxes of blue ale. "That was really expensive," Leia groused.

"You can afford it," Harry said with a dismissive wave. "Besides, this stuff is really good."

"We're being followed," Luke said.

Harry nodded. "I put tracking charms on them. I'm not too worried, though."

"Why?"

"Do you remember that really big guy that looked sort of like a fat elephant bird with four arms?"

"You mean the Basilisk?" Luke asked.

Something about the name of the species made Harry laugh. "Yeah, the 'Basilisk'. I told him the spies were carrying Rokna blue, enough to buy a space frigate."

They had little time to wait before the night was interrupted by the sounds of heavy thuds, screams and finally blaster fire.

"I'd Apparate us, but I need another hour to clear the alcohol out of my system," Harry muttered. "We're pretty close, though. Did we get fuel?"

"Yes, we did."

"Good." Harry continued walking forward, with Leia by his side and Luke hanging back by Obi-Wan.

It was the young man who spoke first. "I feel something," he said. "Something is wrong."

"More agents?" Leia asked.

Harry, though, came to a dead stop. "Oh bugger," he muttered.

The sky above split open as a rain of green turbolaser bolts began to fall. Without hesitation, Harry spun around grabbed the three others before they disappeared with a pop. Moments later they appeared in the centre of the shuttle and Harry cried out as he backed up a step and fell to his knee.

"Harry!"

"I'm fine. It just hurt moving you all with that alcohol in my bloodstream. Luke, go! Get us out of here!"

Luke, though, was already running. The ground heaved violently under them as the Empire pounded the space port without mercy.

"Can the Fidelius survive physical damage?"

The sound of something tearing underneath them gave an eloquent if not terrifying answer to Leia's question. "It's intent-driven," Harry said. "At least as I understand it. If the Empire throws a rock at us, it can't touch us. If a rock falls on its own, it will. The charm has its own physical law. If they blow up the planet, we won't survive, Fidelius charm or not!"

Luke was nothing if not fast. The shuttle lifted off. Harry, his head throbbing from Apparating three passengers with alcohol still in his system, made his way forward with the others. Leia took the co-pilot's seat before he could. "Sit, I can fly too," she muttered.

"I'll handle weapons," Obi-Wan whispered.

"Any damage?" Harry asked.

Luke looked out the window—the field where the port one rested was not a field of molten rock from the barrage. "One of the landing struts was damaged," he muttered. "It retracted, but we'll have to be easy on any future landings or it may snap."

Harry had his Occlumency shields up—at the moment he had no desire to feel the Force at all. Leia, though, looked pale and trembled as her hands played over the controls with casual competency.

"The Empire is as ruthless as it is efficient," Obi-Wan said. "Kuna's Tooth is not a major asset or a strategically important outpost. I wonder if they even bothered to evacuate their own garrison before they opened fire."

As they broke through the atmosphere, Harry saw a monstrosity of a ship hovering over the horizon, flanked by five other much smaller Imperial-class star destroyers. "We must have really upset your daddy," Harry muttered. "He's on board that ship, isn't he?"

"We can feel him," Luke breathed. There was an odd mix of fear and longing on his face, and Harry remembered his own feelings for his father, despite later finding out that James Potter was far from a perfect person.

But in Luke's and Leia's case, their father was a homicidal despot. Not quite the same as a school bully who grew up into a decent man.

"He can feel us," Leia warned.

Indeed, the huge ship seemed to be turning in their direction and began to accelerate far faster than a ship that size should have been able to move.

"Yeah, I might have mentioned that Sith can sense us through my magic this close even when I'm shielding," Harry noted. "But he still can't do anything more than…bugger. That's a grav well, isn't it?"

Luke checked his sensors, while Obi-Wan spotted the interdictor that was coming quickly up on them. "We're not going to be able to pull that Force trick again," Harry noted. "Vader can sense right where we are."

"I'm open to suggestions," Obi-Wan said.

"This thing is invisible and impervious to ordinary weapons," Harry said. "I say we fight. Take that interdictor out and then escape on full burn. This thing has a hard-mounted turbolaser cannon, right?"

It was startling to see Luke switch instantly from fugitive to experienced fighter pilot. "He's right, this thing may handle like a pregnant bantha, but it's armed to the teeth." He pulled hard on the control stick. Outside, the star field spun as the ship reoriented itself to head right for the interdictor.

The ship was a slightly different configuration than the Phoenix Redux, looking more like an older Venator class ship with two gravity-wells installed after market. Luke actually grinned. "These things are tin cans," he muttered. "Ben, can you switch over targeting control on the big gun?"

A targeting reticle appeared in the very centre of the cockpit, glowing red. Additional information such as their speed, the target's speed and distance also appeared. Luke lined up the reticle with the first bulbous protrusion of the enemy gravity well generator and fired the turbolaser cannon.

The interior of the assault shuttle actually darkened, and their speed dropped, as every erg of energy was siphoned into the powerful weapon. The enemy ship had ray shields and heavy armour, but nothing like the larger war ships that followed its initial design. The shields, designed to ward off laser cannons from enemy fighters, failed before the powerful blast of what would ordinarily be a capital ship heavy weapon.

Luke followed immediately with a flurry of laser cannons, whose efficacy suddenly increased exponentially now that the ray shields had failed. The dome sparked and turned red before it exploded, blasting off both the dorsal and ventral domes so that it looked as if something had ripped through the enemy ship in a vertical line.

Luke then demonstrated that ships in space did not have to follow the same rules as ships in atmosphere by cutting the forward thrusters, flipping the whole assault shuttle over the ventral line of the enemy ship, and repeating the whole procedure while flying backwards away from the interdictor.

"Well now you're just showing off," Harry muttered.

Luke grinned while Leia laughed. "There was a reason the Alliance was prepared to put him in a Starfighter the very day we arrived at the base," she said. "His scores were off their charts."

Meanwhile, Luke flipped the assault shuttle again and put on full burn. "I'm setting a course back to Avalon," Luke said. "Ten minutes in, we'll change back to Adega."

"Good thinking," Harry said. "And now, I'm going lie down. Correction, I'm going to go be sick, and then I'm going to lie down."

Leia cast a worried glance, but Harry was already stumbling out of the cockpit until he reached the cramped fresher in his chosen room. The shuttle was designed to ferry Stormtroopers in large numbers, but also maintained a pair of cramped state rooms for VIPs or officers. After he emptied his stomach of the rest of the alcohol and the other mostly inedible bar foods, he washed his mouth out, used a breath freshening charm, and sank down into the narrow cot.

He was not surprised when Leia came in a few minutes later and sat down beside him. "Are you ill?" she asked softly.

"I'm a very powerful wizard," Harry said, "but there are limits to what I can do. There's an exponential increase in the amount of magic required to side-Apparate a person. Most wizards can't do more than one at a time. Two is stretching it and a strain even for me. Three was borderline dangerous."

"You probably saved our lives, though."

"Yeah, totally worth the headache," Harry smiled.

With her own gentle smile, Leia leaned over and placed the tips of her fingers over his eyebrows. With the touch came a trickle of energy that seeped into his head like a cool wash of water, dousing the worse of the pain. It was not a sudden rush of relief, but rather a slow, steady healing. It was more than anything Harry could do himself, especially since it was his magic that was hurt and not his body. His healing magic could heal everything but itself.

"You're amazing," he breathed up at her. "You're simply amazing."

"I try," she said with a shrug.

"You know I love you, right?" he asked.

Her cheeks reddened, but the light in her eyes changed and seemed almost to shimmer. "I wondered," she whispered. "Sometimes you project this sense of independence, like you don't need anyone. I know you enjoy being with me, but…"

Harry sat up and kissed her, hard. When at last they parted, Harry looked her in the eyes and let his shields drop. So close, it was impossible for someone as strong in the Force as Leia not to feel the surge of emotion in Harry's mind.

Her expression vacillated between confusion at the sudden rush of feeling, to surprise at how intense it was, to finally a single tear in the corner of one eye. "Why didn't you show me before?" she whispered.

"When I was a teenager, I had my mind raped repeatedly." It surprised Harry how easy it was to admit something he'd never admitted to anyone else save Ginny. "First by the man who wanted to murder me, then by a man tasked to save me. As soon as I learned the magic to shield my mind, I raised that shield and I don't let it drop often. I think that's why I can never truly be a Jedi like you. With that shield up, I can't really feel the Force, but it takes an act of will for me to ever drop it."

Leia moved to straddle him on the couch just so she could sit straight and face him. "So…it was like what Vader did to me."

"Yeah, pretty similar. Difference is, Leia, you're so strong you don't need those shields. And that is amazing to me. You're amazing. And even if I don't say it or share it with you, I do love you. I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you on the Death Star, and saw how strong you really were."

"And I fell in love with you, Harry, when I woke up that next morning and realized you were willing to give me comfort and ask nothing in return. I realized that I could trust you with everything I was, and you wouldn't betray me."

Harry grinned, and then gently kissed her again. "So, we love each other. What do you think we should do next?"

"Well, it's going to be an hour before we reach Adega," she noted wryly.

"And I know some good locking and silencing charms."

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Author's Note: I promise we will get to Adega. Also, 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.