Revenge of the Wizard (HP x Star Wars)67.50%

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Dark Jedi

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: Chap 26 review responses in my forums as normal. Thanks for reading!

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Dark Jedi

Harry wasn't sure himself why he didn't tell the others about the wards. Given his own power and the fact Luke gave him all he wanted and more in a duel, he didn't think any witches or wizards would present too much of a threat for any of the Jedi. He knew Leia was an able fighter too, after all.

But more than that, a small, selfish part of Harry simply did not want to share. If there were other witches and wizards alive, he wanted to find them first, rather than the Jedi. It was only right, since he was first and foremost a wizard.

Besides, from what Obi-Wan was saying, the day was going to be spent mostly apart. The cavern was rife with Adega crystals, and it was a solitary process to find the right one. It reminded Harry a great deal of how wizards or witches were paired with their first wands. So, the three Jedi gathered spare breather cylinders, since even in the cavern the air was thin, and an extra glow-rod, while Harry watched with a pensive expression.

Before they split up, Leia came and took his hand. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," he said, and then forced a smile. "I guess the ghosts are getting to me."

With a nod, Leia gave him one long, considerate stare. "Harry, you realize don't you, that you'll have to open yourself to the Force to find your crystal?"

"I figured," he admitted reluctantly.

He loved how she had to stand on her tip-toes to kiss him. "It'll be okay. We'll meet back here when we're done. We all have comlinks on."

Before she left, he pulled her back and hugged her tightly. "Be safe," he said, before kissing her.

He watched as the two younger Jedi began trekking into the cave. Obi-Wan remained behind, sitting on a chair he carried out of the tent. The Gubraithian Fire burned at his back, casting gentle blue light around the cavern. "Are they going to find their crystals?"

"Oh, without a doubt," Obi-Wan said. "I've never met two young Jedi more attuned to the Force than those two."

"Would you say Luke is more powerful?"

Obi-Wan shrugged. "Power is a matter of perspective. For instance, my old Padawan had a much stronger connection to the Force than I ever did, and so in terms of brute power was much more a warrior than I was. And yet, in our final duel, it was I who won. Although I admit, with the loss of the Jedi Order around me, it most definitely did not feel like a victory."

Despite the old man's sometimes tenuous relationship with the truth and his more than passing resemblance to Dumbledore, Harry found he liked Obi-Wan. But looking at him now, he had the same feeling he had his second year at Hogwarts, when he discovered for the first time how many secrets Dumbledore was keeping from him. With a shrug, he turned and walked away from the camp into the gloom of the shadowy cavern.

He saw his first ghost not ten minutes in; it was formless, as some of the most ancient spirits tended to be. It flickered on the edge of his vision before flittering in front of him. It came with the classic breath of truly cold air that accompanied the dead, and with it he felt a deep sense of familiarity.

The Master of Death knew the dead as his own.

Finally, he stopped and sat down in the darkness to prepare himself. With a few deep breaths, he let his Occlumency barriers drop and then purposely opened his magical core in a way his fellow witches and wizards could not.

The screaming of a million voices crushed into his mind, so hard and so fast Harry cried out from it. Within the cavern, the crushing of spirits was exponentially worse than anything on the sun-blasted surface. Not since that terrible day in Ministry of Magic, when Voldemort fully invaded, had he felt such terrible pain in his mind.

With the crush of voices came memories not his own…

~~Revenge~~

Leia knelt down before the mound of out-thrust crystals and stared with awed fascination at one in particular that was glowing for her with a brilliant, electric mauve colour that pulsed in time to the beating of her heart.

Ben had explained that a well-matched lightsaber crystal was one attuned with an individual's own Force signature. She realized on an intellectual level that what she was witnessing was a crystal reflecting her own Force power back at her. But emotionally, what she witnessed was a living extension of her own self.

Without hesitation she reached out and the moment she touched the crystal she was sure. It came away with hardly any effort. She wondered if Luke or Harry were having luck with their own when she felt Harry in the Force, blazing brilliantly in a way not even Luke did. She could sense the darkness within him, but the darkness, oddly enough, just made the light shine all the brighter.

And an instant later, the light of his Force presence went utterly black and his mental cry of pain rang through the Force like a clarion bell. "Harry!" she blurted. A heartbeat after, she went flying down the side of the debris pile with a speed only a Jedi could match.

~~Revenge~~

Harry stood on the edge of the Fonts of Enlightenment, the vast promenade that faced the great Jedi Library of Adega. The fountains themselves shot skyward a hundred feet before crashing back down in a constant, soothing roar. The fountains, a hundred of them that framed the promenade, created a wall of white noise that separated the city that arose around them from the serenity within the library itself.

However, the serenity the fountains should have granted was noticeably absent as hundreds of Jedi families gathered together around a large, beetle-shaped shuttle.

They were families, Harry noted. Men and women, mostly humanoid if not human, stood holding each other with children by their sides, watching and listening as the passengers in the shuttle stepped outside and onto an elevated platform.

There were three speakers that emerged-two women of indeterminate age and a human male. One of the women had black hair and bone-white skin, while the other was a stunning figure with classically porcelain skin and red hair that reminded Harry a great deal of Ginny from the distance. All wore robes of red and black that reminded Harry distantly of wizarding robes.

When the man spoke, Harry felt a sense of shock as his voice boomed out over the whole promenade as if he were using a Sonorus charm. "My fellow Jedi, we have returned from our pilgrimage to Ossus. At your behest, we three petitioned the council to be heard. The answer was heresy."

Having grown accustomed to the seemingly implacable nature of Obi-Wan and Yoda, Harry was surprised at the outrage and anger than rippled through the crowds. Cries of dismay echoed among the splashing of the fountains. One of the two females, who had a strange bone-white colour to the many exposed stretches of her skin, raised her arms.

"Hear me!"

Like her male colleague, her voice boomed out over the crowds. "The Jedi Council fears that which they do not understand. Since our ancestors left Tython, we have studied the whole of the Force, Ashla and Bogan alike! And through the study of the Force we have unlocked the secrets of life itself! Our alchemy has created new creatures who have never existed before. My own daughter bears wings through the transformative power of the Force. But our work reminds the old ones of the Council of the dark days of the Great Schism. They name us Dark. They name us Fallen."

Again, angry shouts and yells echoed across promenade, accompanied by shouts of "What to do? What to do?"

"Know this," the woman shouted. "They called for the destruction of every living thing we have created or made better with the Force. They called them abominations. They called my daughter an abomination, and said the attachment I felt for her was a wound in the Force. They wish to kill my little girl!"

At the woman's motion, a girl stepped onto the platform, and Harry felt his stomach knot, because he'd seen girls like this one before. A pair of bird-like wings sprouted from her large shoulders, and her upper body was covered in a fine down of feathers. And though she was still young, her beauty was almost palpable.

The girl was a transformed Veela.

~~Revenge~~

Leia found him a few hundred meters from the camp, flat on his back and as still as death. More concerning still were the flickers of blue hovering around him. The Force boiled about the area with such power it felt as if he were a Nexus in the Force itself.

She rushed to his side. "Harry!" she called. She felt his heartbeat still going strong, but she could not feel his Force presence at all. It felt as if somehow he were not even in his body. "Harry, wake up!"

"Leia." It was not Harry's voice. She looked up and saw Obi-Wan slowly climbing up.

"Master, I can't wake him."

Obi-Wan knelt slowly down on the opposite side of the wizard and gently reached down to touch his eyes. "That is because he is not here."

"Where is he?"

"He is riding the Force, I suspect," Obi-Wan said. "We wondered, Yoda and I, if he would respond to being here. Come, we will take him back to the tent so that he can be comfortable."

Even as Leia levitated her lover, she stared hard at Obi-Wan. "What do you mean, you wondered?"

~~Revenge~~

There were centaurs, though they looked different than the ones Harry knew—more human, somehow. The male centaurs were as bare as the females, and were all much smaller as well than the centaurs Harry had known. He realized the bodies were not actually those of horses, but of some smaller, similar creature. Moreover, these centaurs were Jedi. They carried their larger, slightly bulkier lightsabers and power packs where their narrow human hips melded into the quadruped body.

Nearby, Harry saw a pair of extremely large humans—perhaps a little taller than Hagrid but smaller than true giants.

And then there were the Veela—a grouping of stunningly beautiful, angelic girls with wings, feathered shoulders and an allure that was almost palpable. They stood on the promenade near the western ring of fountains, nervously watching as the three speakers from before approached with four newcomers.

The newcomers wore oddly militaristic uniforms. Greaves and chest-plates were accentuated by brown robes of a similar but older cut than the modern Jedi robes, with tall, slightly bulbous helmets of silver. Their armour was gold, and highly detailed with motifs and arcane runes in a language that looked startlingly similar to ancient Atlantean.

The four newcomers walked with stony expressions, hands behind their backs. Their lightsabers, like those of the rest, were connected to power packs at their hips by a long cable. The three speakers from before looked positively barbaric next to the newcomers, with half-kilts at the waists and bare torsos that accentuated the beauty of the females, and the strength of the man.

"As you can see," the woman was saying, "there is no darkness in these beings. They were born of our own children and the Force. With the Force, we have made our children stronger, faster, and more beautiful. The Centaurs can run for days on end, while the giants are as strong as any ten men even without the force. Even their skin has been hardened against Force-swords and laser weapons. And of course, our daughters can fly and use the Force naturally to render enemies helpless just by their presence. And'aia, show the masters your fire."

The stunning little girl from before raised a hand, and within her fingers a ball of fire gathered from the air itself. She threw it like a baseball, but it travelled as fast as a blaster bolt.

"Search the Force," the woman said, begging. "You know these beings are not abominations. They are our children, and are beloved of all here. We do not wish conflict with the Council, truly we do not. We are not the Legions of Lettow who seek strength in the darkness of the Bogan. But we beg of you, do not ask us to destroy our own children. It is too much."

"Tell me, XoXaan," one of the Jedi said to the white-skinned woman. "Did your daughter ask to be subjected to your…changes?"

The woman name XoXaan lifted her chin. "Of course not, Master. She was unborn when the changes were wrought. It would be truly an act of darkness to change the nature of a being already born and alive, since to do so would cause untold pain."

"So," another of the Jedi said, "all these…beings were changed while yet unborn?"

"Yes," XoXaan said.

"Is it not the height of hubris to shape life beyond its intended form before that life even has opportunity to give assent?" the first Jedi asked pointedly.

"Ask them now, Masters," the man said. "Ask them if they suffer or regret their form."

"Corduna Pall, you of all Jedi should know the futility in such an act," the fourth of the Jedi asked. He was not human, but rather a Duros. "They are now what they are, and know no other way of being. How can they know whether they would prefer their Force-intended forms, or these twisted obscenities you have forced upon them, without being given chance to know both?"

The man's eyes narrowed. "Regardless of their form, it is their nature which I speak of. These are not creations of darkness."

"And yet a darkness was used in their creation," the first, human Jedi said. "They are abomination." He stopped walking and the other Jedi master stopped as well, staring at the proto-Veela. "If truly you seek to stay within the liturgy of the Jedi, then you still stop all work with this…transfiguration of the flesh. As for the disposition of those already created…we will return to Ossus to meditate. Know, however, that often to accede to the Will of the Force is to learn to let go that which you fear most to lose."

"Is that the Will of the Force, or the Will of the Council?" XoXaan asked.

"They are, in this instance, the same," the head Jedi master said coolly. "We will return now."

~~Revenge~~

"Leia, Master Kenobi, I found my…what's wrong?" Luke ran into the tent clutching a sapphire crystal, only to come up short when he saw Leia sitting worriedly beside the couch that held a prone, motionless Harry Potter.

"You didn't feel it?" Leia asked.

Luke blinked as if slapped, such was the worry and fear he felt in his sister's words. "I'm sorry, but no. I'm…I'm not linked as closely to him as you are. And the crystal…my crystal…kind of drowned everything out."

"Don't worry, Luke," Obi-Wan said as he emerged from the kitchen carrying tea. That much he could do. He handed a cup to Leia and sat himself on a chair near the couch. "I suspect Mr. Potter has unintentionally entered a Force trance. Physically he is fine."

"But why can't I feel him?" Leia asked with an anguish Luke hadn't seen since Alderaan.

"Because he is not here, in this time," Obi-wan explained.

"Where would he be?"

"That, my dear, is the question." Obi-Wan sipped his tea and regarded his Padawan intently. "I have hesitated to mention this to you, but do you understand that Mr. Potter is not like you or I?"

"He's a wizard, yes, I know."

"No, Leia. His friends on Avalon are wizards and witches. Mr. Potter is something more. You've heard his story, his talk of what his people called the Deathly Hallows. A wand that grants brutal power and makes a wizard nigh unbeatable save by treachery; a ring that can summon the souls of the dead; and finally a cloak of invisibility so powerful it can hide a soul from death itself. And when used together, they made the user a master of death. But the term, I think, is misleading. For Harry is not so much death's master as its slave. Death is a gift, for none of us were meant to live forever. It is a natural and good thing, though I admit it comes too early for too many. But Leia, Harry there is only fifteen years younger than I am and looks younger than you. His healing abilities are phenomenal. It is possible that he is truly immortal, or if not, then extraordinarily long-lived."

Leia always knew that Harry was older than she was—they talked about it often enough. But looking at Obi-Wan's white hair and beard, and the weathered lines of his face, it was a startling comparison. "I know," she said softly.

"Do you? What will you do when you are eighty, and Harry still looks like a teenager?"

Leia's lower lip trembled. "You don't want me seeing him. You don't approve of us."

"It is not my place to approve or not," Obi-Wan said, though it was obvious he disapproved anyway. "I merely wish you to be cognizant of the implications in what Harry is. I believe he is a good person, Leia. But he is not human, not any more. Perhaps he will discover during his journeys what he is. But you need to know that there is a very good chance that, while you will end in time, he will not."

~~Revenge~~

The skies bristled with the hulking ships of the Republic and Orthodox Jedi fleets. Xoxaan and Corduna Pall, and hundreds of other Jedi, stood in concentric circles around three lorry-sized white crystals floating of their own accord in the centre of the promenade.

The assembled Jedi chanted in unison, channelling unbelievable power through the three large crystals. Around them, thousands of other Jedi watched in fascination while sending their own power to those doing the chanting. By the very focus of their words, the chanting Jedi created rune patterns on the crystal that look vaguely familiar to Harry, at least in their intent if not their form.

The Jedi were creating ward stones.

As they all chanted, three figures step forward from the inner circle of Jedi. They included XoXaan, Corduna Pall, and the third woman Harry did not know, who was perhaps the most beautiful of all. She reminded Harry of home with her porcelain skin and bright, flame-red hair. They stepped forward until each of them stood between one of the three massive crystals and the rings of chanting Jedi around them. The chanters increased the rhythm of their chanting, and to this increased tempo the three Jedi reached up and out. With their left hand they touched the crystal in front of them, while with their right they reached out to the one beside, until the three formed a taut circle around the three closely aligned crystals.

Suddenly the white crystals surged with red magic. The three Jedi in the center screamed so loudly for a time they drowned out the chanting of those around them. Red steaks of lightning sparked through each of the three as they convulsed with power no human body was ever meant to channel.

Suddenly it was over. From each of the three great ward stones came a single shard that floated to each of the three that now collapsed on the ground. When the shards were delivered, the now blood-red ward crystals shot up and away to the three corners of the temple, creating a visible dome of protective energy that expanded as the crystals flewt, until the whole of the library and temple was covered. Almost immediately, the sky caught fire as the fleet above rained down not turbolaser blasts, but asteroids. The fleet was using mass drivers because this was a time well before such technology as turbolasers, but the barrage was no less deadly for the lack of the newer weapons.

Stones as large as buildings impacted the world at near relativistic speed and unleashed explosions that ripped apart the sky and the ground below. One fiery asteroid impacted the ward dome itself. The assembled Jedi screamed in terror, but the asteroid shattered on the unbelievable power of the ward. The laws of physics, however, remained. The whole library grounds and promenade sank into the earth by a dozen feet from the sheer kinetic energy of the blow, while elsewhere around the once rich and fertile planet the crust cracked and broke under the onslaught.

Then all Harry could see was darkness.

From the darkness came a single pulse of red light, a flicker of warmth in the cold that grew steadily brighter as it approached Harry's perception. Until, at the last, he stood looking at Lily Potter.

"Mother?"He whispered, too shocked to even find his full voice.

"I am not your mother, Harry Potter," the woman said, and he could see now that her cheeks were set higher than his mother's, her eyes brown instead of green. It was the third Jedi he saw. "Though you carry my legacy in your blood. I am Hekate, and with my husband Corduna and our dear friend XoXaan, we saved our people from the hypocrisy of the Jedi Order. All it cost was our mortality."

The darkness in the distance lit up like a stage in a theatre, and Harry saw the temple again framed by a wall of red-hot lava kept at bay only by the wards. In the centre of the promenade rested two large ships.

"Our world was shattered beyond repair, and so a choice was made," Hekate explained. She spoke with a calm, heavy gravitas as she pointed. "Xoxaan chose to fight the Orthodoxy, as did my husband and son Arjuna Pall and many others."

The white-skinned woman, untouched by age, gathered a force of angry men and women who climbed aboard the shuttle. With them came some of the giants, centaurs, and many of the feathered, winged Veela.

"But others chose to save what remained of our people." Into the second shuttle walked the children and mothers of the Jedi sect, with even more of the Veela, a few centaurs and a handful of the Hagrid-sized giants. And last, her hand on the shoulder of a grandson with a shock of black hair, walked the proto-witch named Hekate.

"They're going to Earth," Harry realized, speaking softly. "And their ship is going to crash land in the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred miles west of the Straits of Gibraltar."

He turned and looked at the woman who could have been his mother's sister. "You were the first magicals on Earth."

She nodded and held out her hand. Three red crystals hovered above her palm, a shard of each of the great ward stones of Adega he saw earlier. "We carried with us these holy relics of our first and last great act of magic on this world, while our brethren went forth to fight a war we had no hope of ever winning. I was chosen to be the keeper of the Adega wards so that someday we might return. But my brethren and family lost themselves to the fight and became that which the Jedi always accused us of being. I and our children went instead to a primitive world that knew of the Force only in passing, and knew nothing at all, of the greater galaxy. And on this world we made our home."

The darkness beyond them lit up again, and Harry saw Veela running free in the forests of what would one-day be Bulgaria, enticing hapless travellers to their beds before slaughtering and eating them. Giants grew bigger and stronger as they absorbed the ambient magic of Earth's unusually powerful ley lines, while the Centaurs went apart to seek meaning in the stars.

All the time, Hekate stayed with her descendants even if from a distance, in turn worshipped or reviled as a deity to be feared or loved, unending as always, until finally she came across three of her own descendants many eons later. She saw within them destinies that would shape the world for centuries to come.

Harry watched, as if in the audience of a play, as Hekate, wishing to end her curse of immortality in a way that would not damn another soul to eternity of life, tore her own magic apart by removing the three shards of Adega ward stones from her body, where they had lodged to become a part of her very magic. She shaped the shards into objects the primitive wizards could understand—a cloak, a stone and a wand. And the Peverell brothers took them gladly, thinking it was death itself they spoke with, rather than their ancient ancestor.

What the brothers never knew was how Hekate walked away broken in magic and frail in body, and all too mortal. She died mere days later, content to become one with the Force at long last.

"Why me?" Harry whispered.

"Better you than your children," Hekate said without pity. "Better you than your friends. Who else would you have chosen in your stead? Because only you were strong enough to carry the burden again. Just like my world, yours was condemned by fate and the Force. And just like my world, only by the sacrifice of the most powerful could any of your people hope to live."

Drawn to this ancient, powerful figure, Harry said, "Were you happy?"

"There were times," she allowed with a sad smile. "Cherish your brief moments, Harry Potter. They will be few, but all the precious for that rarity. But they will sustain you on the long journey of your life."

Harry smiled at her, his heart surging. "You know, I really only came for a lightsaber."

"Lightsabers are for Jedi," Hekate said, for the first time allowing the hint of a smile to grace her striking features. "You, Harry Potter, are a wizard. Take what you have learned here, child. Use it to protect your own people, my progeny."

And just like that, Harry opened his eyes to see Leia propped on the edge of the couch where he lay, holding his hands and looking worriedly down at him. "Hey, Short Stuff," he whispered with a smile as his heart surged at the sight of her. "Miss me?"

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.

Last Chapter Next Chapter