Chapter Twenty-Six: Cold Adega Nights

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: As normal Chap 25 Review Responses are in my forums. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Cold Adega Nights

"Do you think Earth will look like that someday?"

Harry sat in the co-pilot's seat, with Leia standing behind him, when Luke brought the assault shuttle out of hyperspace on the edge of the planet's gravity well. The world they saw had everything it needed to have been a garden paradise. Vast oceans glittered with reflected light from its mild white-yellow star, while continents gave an even weight to the landmass.

According to the shuttle's sensors, the world even had a healthy magnetic field generated by its iron core.

And yet, Harry could see no signs of life save for a few tinges of green along some of the coasts. What he did see were huge plains of almost flat land with the tell-tale hemispheres of black sand dunes on one side of the largest equatorial continent, while the other side was lined with tall, ragged mountains. Everywhere he saw signs of its geologic trauma—massive craters gouged through again and again as if by giant claws.

"Records are sparse for the era," Obi-Wan noted from behind Luke. "The planet was a ball of ice during the Great Sith Wars, but some of the older Jedi archive entries hint that it was destroyed during the Hundred Years Darkness seven thousand years ago. There has been speculation that Darkness saw the birth of the Sith order. It's only been in the last few centuries that the ice has receded."

When the ice receded from Earth's surface, Harry wondered if the world of his birth would look like this.

He wondered if he would still be alive to see it.

"Where should we land?" Luke asked.

"The western mountain range," Obi-Wan said. "Follow your instincts, you'll know where."

Whereas Harry would have needed explicit coordinates and a computer guiding him in, Luke-too-damned-good-to-be-real merely nodded and set a course by line of sight alone for the black and red mountains.

"You've been here before?" Harry asked their old Jedi.

Obi-Wan nodded. "We came, my old master and I, when I was younger than Luke and Leia here. My old master was a strong proponent of the Living Force, and he brought me to Adega to feel for myself how even the Force can bleed when life is not cherished. I dare say none of you will find the experience pleasant."

"Ghosts?" Harry asked.

Leia scoffed, until Obi-Wan nodded sombrely. "For lack of a better word, yes. The world held a large Jedi library and temple, and a community of several million grew up around it, as often happened in the older days of the Order, back before attachments were forbidden."

"Master, surely you don't…" Leia began.

"Ghosts are real," Harry said softly. "I've not only seen them, but I've spoken to them, even as a child. The history teacher in my school had been dead for over two hundred years and still taught the class. Not only that, but he was fully sentient and could respond to questions posed to him. For all I know, the ghosts are still there, under all the ice."

Leia shuddered and absently he took her hand. Meanwhile, Luke brought them to the mountain ranges. Closer now, Harry looked out and saw a line of jagged peaks more in the shape of a giant saw than what he thought of as mountains. "There's no place to land in the mountains," Luke noted absently.

"I dare say not, those mountains are mere thousands of years old. Still babies in geologic time, really. Perhaps you should bring us to the foothills there."

Luke seemed to understand where Obi-Wan meant, since the older man did not point. Nonetheless, Luke banked the shuttle sharply to put them into position to land. With the internal compensators, Harry barely felt the manoeuvre at all. In minutes they came to a complete stop within a stone's throw of the first black, ragged rise of rock.

"Oxygen is at only twelve percent," Luke noted. "Mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. We'll need breathing masks."

While a Bubblehead charm could do the same thing, Harry took a mask anyway. Having no idea what they would encounter; he didn't want to have to expend magic or thought on being able to breathe. Though the masks were small, they used a chemical reaction so far beyond Harry's or even Earth's sciences as to be magic in and of themselves to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and split it into usable oxygen and disposable carbon. The masks were widely used because carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide were common among terrestrial planetary atmospheres, and the masks could last for days on a canister the size of Harry's thumb.

They each carried a pack since it was possible their trip would take days, and left the ship.

They stepped out into a furnace-a blazing heat that struck them like physical blows. "Merlin's blue balls, you want us to climb in this?" Harry muttered. He immediately snapped off over-powered cooling charms on the four of them.

Leia sighed. "Thanks. How long will it last?"

"Ordinarily a day—in this, maybe an hour if we're lucky."

Surveying the mountain, Harry finally shook his head and said, "I can scout ahead. Leia, want to stay or come?"

"Come on what?" she asked.

He grinned, reached into the pocket of his baby-blue Avalon defence force uniform, and removed a six-foot-long broom with foot and hand bars. Leia matched his grin. "So it was really a broom in your pocket?"

"No, I was happy to see you too."

Luke made a gagging sound.

"Fascinating, but what exactly are you going to do with that?" Obi-Wan asked, almost desperate to redirect the two.

"Watch and learn," Harry said as he mounted. "Leia?"

"If this is a joke, I'm going to hit you," Leia said lightly as she climbed on behind him.

"Hold on tight."

"Why? What…Haaaarrrrryyyyy!"

He couldn't help the happy grin as she grabbed onto him for her very life as the two shot into the sky borne on magic alone. After she settled, she yelled over the wind, "This is Amazing!"

"I try," he shouted back. "You should see a Quidditch game next time we're back on Avalon!"

Once the first surge of adrenaline calmed, Harry was able to start seriously looking at the mountain. "What are we looking for?"

"A cave, I think," Leia said.

Below, jagged black rock rose up in blade-like fan formations that would have made climbing nigh impossible. Still, he scanned them as best he could, but given half of his attention was on flying he wasn't surprised that Leia was the one who spotted it. He felt her hand on his right arm and then saw where she pointed silently.

With a nod, he redirected them toward the area she noticed. At first, he couldn't see anything, but once he got closer he saw it. It wasn't so much a cave as it was a hole in one peak. But from it he could spot a very narrow foot path that led down. He followed the path back down to the base of the mountain until they arrived at the valley just a hundred feet from where Luke's instincts led him to land.

"Your brother's just too damned good."

"You haven't played Sabbac with him," she said with a gentle laugh. "Or Bombarde, or Rancor's Maze, or any other game that requires strategy. He's a brilliant Jedi, an incredible pilot, and one of the most generous and nice people you will ever meet, but he can't win a strategy game to save his life, and for someone as sensitive to the Force as he is, he is terrible at games of chance."

"That's because I don't cheat," Luke said archly as he joined them. "And I'm not that good, Harry."

"You sure have good hearing."

"You were still talking loud because of the wind," Leia pointed out.

"Fairly screaming, in fact," Obi-Wan said with a wry smile.

"Shut it, you. I have every right to my own petty jealousies and insecurities, thank you very much."

"Says a potentially immortal sorcerer who can call the dead," Luke said. For once, he nailed the sarcasm.

"Even awesome people have doubts," Harry shrugged. "So, there's your path."

"Yes, we had noticed," Obi-Wan said. "That was, in fact, why we were standing here."

Harry looked from one man to the other. "Shut up," he said, before storing his broom. With another sigh, he looked up the path. "Right, let's go then."

The cooling charms wore off not even a third of the way up. Harry reapplied them as fast as he could, and yet his uniform was still soaking by the time he got the next charm up. He conjured glasses and then water for all of them, drinking his own.

"Is this safe to drink?" Luke asked suspiciously.

"Conjured water is permanent, so yes," Harry said. "It's one of the only permanent conjurations in magic, since technically it's just condensing water from the air." He conjured some more and drank.

By the time they reached the mouth of the cave, they'd gone through three cooling charms and Harry had to resort to dropping his mental shields and drawing on the Force to replenish his flagging muscles. When he did so, he felt a bone-deep sense of pain emanating from all around. "Whoa!" he said.

Leia, having sensed his mind the moment he dropped his Occlumency, nodded. "I know. We felt it before we even landed. The Force cries out from the memory of the death here."

Once he was sure he wouldn't pass out and embarrass himself in front of Leia's brother, Harry slapped his shields back in place and they continued until they reached the cave, which like he saw from above was more of a hole where ordinarily would have been a razor-sharp ridge of rocky death. He cast a Lumos down the cave and stared in surprise. "Hand holds? Really?"

"As I said, my old Master brought me here before," Obi-Wan said. "And I'm fairly certain his master before brought him as well. While it is not commonly visited by Jedi, it is a fairly unique experience that certain Jedi masters thought an important lesson for their Padawans. It is safe, for the most part."

"Yeah, it's that qualifier at the end which bothers me," Harry said. Still, with a shrug he started down the ladder that was built into the surprisingly sheer rock. Halfway down he saw something that should not have been there—a slightly tilted horizontal line. "Is this a join?"

"Yes, we're entering what was left of the great library of Adega," Obi-Wan said from above.

They continued climbing down almost sixty feet in a cramped chimney that was smooth on one side, but rough and sharp on the other, until they arrived at a small pocket of clear space on the bottom. The only light came from Harry's magic, though he knew the others carried glowrods. By the brilliant white of the witch light, Harry stared in dismay at the only way forward.

"You want me to crawl through that?" he asked of the round opening not even three feet high and barely that wide. "Seriously? I'm not sure I want a lightsaber that much, thank you."

"Are you scared?" Luke asked, laughing.

"You want to live your life as a Kowakian monkey-lizard?" Harry snapped back.

"Do you even know what a Kowakian monkey-lizard is?" Leia asked with feigned calm.

"No, but it sounds pretty awesome. Know where I can get one? We can go right now, really…" She took his hand.

"I'll go first," she offered.

"While staring at your ass is also pretty awesome, I'm not sure it's worth crawling through a death-hole," Harry said.

Gently she stepped to him and placed her hands on both his cheeks; suddenly he could feel the Force through her touch. "It'll be okay," she whispered. "Promise."

"I do not like caves," Harry said with all seriousness. "You try growing up in a cupboard, and then face an army of undead zombies in a cave, and see if you like tiny, dark enclosed spaces."

"But it's okay, because I'm going to be with you," Leia said. "And you love me, remember?"

"Yeah."

She leaned forward more and whispered, "Open your shields, Harry. Link with me, and we will be together."

Looking into those big almond eyes of hers, Harry found it impossible to resist and let his shields drop. Immediately she swept into his consciousness like a white cloud of happy. With one last kiss, she knelt down by the cave mouth, activated her glow-rod, and started forward. Even when he could see nothing but the light from her glowrod, he could feel her in his mind as if she were kissing him.

He turned to Luke and said, "Not a word."

Surprisingly, he nodded. "I understand. She's waiting for you."

With a bitter sigh, Harry climbed into the cave after Leia. "So tell me about this cupboard," Leia said casually from up ahead.

"Small, dirty, spiders. Smelled like unwashed boy and vomit."

"Why?"

"Let's say my aunt and uncle did not ask for me, did not want me, and most definitely were glad to see me gone."

"I was raised by my aunt and uncle too," Luke noted from behind. "Aunt Beru was always nice, but Uncle Owen was a real hardass."

"Did your brother just say a naughty word?" Harry asked Leia.

"Yeah, and he drinks beer and stares at girl's chests sometimes when he's supposed to look them in the eye, too," Leia said.

"She wanted me to look!" Luke said with a defensive whine.

"And what makes you think that?" Leia asked archly.

"Maybe it was the lack of a brassier and a neckline that ended at her belly button?!"

Harry tried to picture that. "I don't know, I'd probably look at that too. Was she cute?"

"She was a Zeltron," Leia noted. "They live to have sex. They're empaths and feed on good emotions from others."

Harry considered that for a moment. "That sounds a lot like a Veela. You remember Fleur, the one whose daughter had Luke blushing so much? She has an allure that can turn men into putty."

"She is quite lovely."

"No, I mean she has an actual manifestation of magic that can reduce men to putty. The Veela were magical hybrids. If you get her mad enough she sprouts feathers, claws and can throw fireballs at you without a wand. Bill told me it happened the day after their honeymoon. He said the make-up sex after that was the stuff of legends."

Suddenly, without another word said, they emerged from the narrow passage into a cavern lost in the gloom. Strangely, though, he saw flickers of a pale blue light shimmering at odd spots like some bioluminescence, only from the planet itself. With their link still in place through the Force, he felt Leia's satisfaction and sent a small pulse of thanks, and then gently raised his shields again.

He loved her, but it just left him feeling too naked and vulnerable to leave his mental shields down. Though she had a brief frown, Leia seemed to understand.

The cavern was easily a mile across and seemed to dominate the base of the mountain over them. "So, any idea how this place survived?" Harry asked as they wandered through a dimly lit footpath toward the massive stone edifice that was once the Jedi library at Adega.

"Only speculation," Obi-Wan said. "My master's master felt it was the will of the Force itself. I always suspected they had a primitive planetary shield, or possibly used the Force itself as a shield. I could not say for sure, though."

Harry nodded and continued forward toward the library. Around it, the rock rose up in harsh, blackened waves as if the temple sank into the heart of a volcano and somehow survived. "Is there anything left in the library?"

"No, more's the pity," Obi-Wan said. "Believe me, we've looked."

They reached a relatively flat surface in front of the library edifice itself. With his foot Harry cleaned off a thick coating of dust to reveal a flagstone. "Hold on," he warned them. With a wave, he began a banishing chain that blew the black sand clear until he could see the stones below.

Though rubbed faint by time and wear, Harry could make out the rough outline of the flame and sword of the Jedi. "A good a place to make camp as any," he said.

"I quite agree," Obi-Wan said. He and Luke began pulling their small tents from their pack. He glanced at Leia with a wink before removing what at first appeared to be an equally small tent, but one which assembled itself at a wave of his hand.

"Join me?' he asked.

Leia smiled brilliantly and took his hand as they stepped into a tent which at first glance had maybe five square feet of space. Inside, they emerged in a comfortable living area complete with couches and sofas. A dining room table and chairs sat near the magical kitchen, while two flaps led to two separate kitchens.

"I love magic," Leia whispered.

"It does come in handy. Now, let's see what we have to eat."

"Are you really going to let Luke and Ben sleep out in their little tents?"

"I was."

Leia rolled her eyes and then left the tent to call out an invitation to the others. She stepped back in and stared at the now sheepish Harry. "Fine," he muttered. "It was the polite thing to do. But I'm not sharing a room with your brother."

At least this time she giggled, but then took his hand. "Are you okay, Harry? You've been acting on edge since Avalon."

Harry shrugged. "I'm worried. The Empire did what we thought was impossible—they found Avalon in spite of a planet-wide Fidelius charm. It's only a matter of time before they figure out a way to either break the charm or just destroy the world entirely."

Luke and Ben came in just then, and Luke looked around wide-eyed. "Wow," he breathed. "Why can't the Force do this?" he asked to Obi-Wan.

"Why can magic not guide your actions or grant wisdom?" Obi-Wan responded. "They are different aspects of power from divergent traditions. However, in this case I would be glad for a bed to sleep in. I'm not as young as I once was."

"I am," Harry joked. "I'll get the wards set, just to be safe. There's food in the kitchen."

It took only a few minutes to set the wards. By the time he came in, he found three Jedi staring in confusion at the magical appliances of his kitchen. "So how many Jedi does it take to make dinner?" he asked.

"None, evidently," Obi-Wan said.

Harry snorted. "Fine, get out of the way, I'll make dinner."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

Harry woke abruptly, his eyes snapping open onto the dark fabric of their tent. The only source of light was the feeble flicker of Gubraithian flame at the mouth of the tent. Unconsciously he felt for the wards, but nothing with ill-intent seemed near.

Gently he turned and stared down at the incredible woman curled up beside him. It took him many years of marriage to be able to sleep while touching something. It was hard for Ginny, who wanted to snuggle all the time, to understand that he could not sleep while in contact with another person. Time eased those old fears, though, until now having Leia half-draped over him like a blanket against the cold night was a relief rather than a burden.

That old familiar pull in his chest assured him that yes, he did love this remarkable woman. And that he was incredibly lucky she loved him. He thought of Ginny, and of his children, smiling as he did so. It wasn't as hard as it used to be. He thought of the day Albus started school, while Lily whined about being home alone just like her mother did when she was little.

He thought of how beautiful Ginny looked when she saw the ring he purchased for her. Or the first time she put James to her breast. It was a moment of such deep, brutal beauty it left Harry teary-eyed and speechless.

"I miss you, Ginny," he whispered aloud. "I always will. But I love her. Thank you for letting me love her."

Though she didn't wake, Leia pulled on him as if to bring herself even closer. And it was at that exact moment that Harry realized what had woken him.

There was another ward nearby—a protective ward that had almost the exact same feeling as Hogwarts did, or even the Avalon colony. There were witches and wizards on Adega!

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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.