Just from the view during their approach, Harry could almost feel how ancient the site where the Rebels had made a home for themselves, was. The high pyramid-like building, despite how monumental it might be, even when viewed from high up, had been completely overwhelmed by the jungles of Yavin 4, save for a small strip of ground where the encroaching green had been rebuffed. Yet, he could still see vines creeping their way back onto the clearing that had most probably been painstakingly created, wrested from the dense forest.
That clearing was also his target.
"Massassi Station, this is the Morningstar. Do you have a landing spot picked out for us?" the freshly-minted pilot asked the person on the other end of the line.
"Morningstar, just through the blast door and follow the signals of the ground crew," the voice replied. Stiff-guy was back, it seemed.
"Will do," Harry affirmed, now that he was getting rather eager to see more of this fascinating place; it reminded him of the pyramids the Inca (or was it the Maya? Maybe both?) had built, and he was almost desperate to know how it would look like on the inside.
"Luke are you watching?" he asked his 'pupil', who, just like Harry himself, seemed to be captivated by the great temple. "Now, as I'm neither an experienced pilot nor all that familiar with this ship, this is a great time for manoeuvring thrusters. I'll pull back on the main engine as soon as we come close to the hangar entrance, then I can use these controls to bring us in."
They soon hovered through the yawning chasm that was the open blast doors at the ground level of the great pyramid, and Harry could not help the feeling of being swallowed by an ancient beast. Inside the base, there was plenty of traffic going on, with throngs of people moving about, decked out invariably in some kind of different uniforms; some were rather more colourful than he thought was tactically advantageous. Then again, neither were the shiny white armours of the Imperial Stormtroopers. He just hoped these were not dedicated combat personnel.
In the back of the large hangar space, he could see a ground crewman (or woman, hard to tell from the distance) was signalling for him to come closer with the glowing cones he held in his hands. Harry was just to about to get really worried about flattening that unflinchingly brave person, when they finally spread their arms to indicate for him to stop and set down. Feeling inordinately relieved at not destroying anything during his first landing, the captain slowly lowered the intensity of the repulsorlifts until they gently set down on the concrete floor.
As the group, Leia and Harry in the lead, made their way down the lowered ramp, they were quickly accosted by a large gathering of people; some of them adorned in the brightly-coloured uniforms he had seen during his approach, others in more understated khakis and olives. However, all of them seemed invariably very happy to see them, or more specifically Leia.
Chief amongst them was the man they had been talking with over the comms connection; not the stiff one, the happy one. Without much of a warning, the Rebel leader rushed in to smother the Princess in a warm embrace.
"You're safe! We'd feared you lost together with Alderaan," Commander Willard enthused, before quickly remembering his position and their audience and abruptly composing himself.
"No, though I was there to witness the Empire's cruelty first-hand while being kept prisoner on their battle station," Leia explained morosely. "Nevertheless, we managed to secure the schematics to their weapon of terror, though I fear any direct assault would prove fruitless."
At the mention the plans, a surprisingly smug-looking R2-D2 rolled forward (Harry had no idea, how a droid could look smug, but this one did) and presented itself to the gathered crowd.
"I entered the plans into the data matrix of this astromech, so the technicians should be able to get a readout," she continued, watching on as the R2 unit was hoisted into the air surprisingly reverently.
"So, you were a prisoner of Tarkin's?" another white-haired man, this one with a beard, wearing the same khaki-coloured uniform the commander did, inquired. "How did you manage to escape?"
"I did not escape, General Dodonna," Leia clarified, as she took a step away from Harry and his crew. "These brave souls freed me. Not because of any hopes of a reward, but just because it was the right thing. We stole the ship you see before you now, and it got us here."
The man called General Dodonna bowed at the hip in the direction of the crew, the captain of which was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the attention all these people were paying him.
"Then you, Captain Potter, and your crew, have our gratitude. It would have hit all of us, had the Princess been lost," he conveyed his sincerity. "Might we be able to convince you to join us more permanently, now that you have made enemies of the Empire?"
Leia cleared her throat at hearing that. "General Dodonna, this is hardly the place for such a discussion," she insisted, glancing at the gathered personnel. "Perhaps we can retire to a more private area and give the technicians and analysts the time to go through the schematics we have managed to acquire?"
As she had suggested, so it happened, and it was amusing to see how willingly this group of experience men followed the softly worded reprimands of such a young woman. To a bank of lifts, they were led, which they took to the third level of the old temple, where they were soon ensconced inside a rather cramped briefing room.
"Sorry for that, General Dodonna," Leia apologised. "The truth of Captain Potter's existence must never reach the Empire, and as much as I trust every person in this base, the Emperor's interrogators are also relentless, as I've had to find out."
"Of course, absolutely correct," the general acquiesced. "I was just swept up in the euphoria of seeing you alive and well. Shall we get through introductions, then?"
"It would be my pleasure. Luke Skywalker and Jedi Master and General of the Grand Army of the Republic, Obi-Wan Kenobi," she first introduced the two men, one of them standing there, dignified, while the other was still reeling in fascination at the base.
"So, there are yet surviving Jedi," Willard marvelled. "I had thought them all lost during the purge."
Kenobi nodded gravely. "There are still some, although I am only sure of one other," he clarified. "I have found that young Skywalker here has a strong connection to the Force and agreed to train him."
"Can I learn to fly one of those X-wings?" Luke interceded at that point. "Leia said I could try…"
Dodonna breathed in sharply, then relaxed his posture again. "Well, you're already as eager as any fighter pilot," the general replied. "We can arrange for you to try out in a simulator."
Somewhat mollified by that idea, Luke fell silent again, although he resumed looking around fascinatedly, while also visibly taking in as much of what was being said as was humanly possible.
"Finally, these are Captain Harry Potter, and his crew; Arden Tla of Dathomir, and the former Imperial Navy Lieutenant Mercer Fenwick," Leia continued the introductions, pointing at each of the three in return. "As well as former members of the Imperial Army Javoc Perdiv and Corsek Betsby."
A good deal of unease seemed to be going around the room as the Rebel leaders realised how many of their guests were former Imperials, but luckily, Leia would not have it. "Gentlemen, please. Most of you are defectors, just like these three," she chided gently. "Give them the same chance the Rebellion gave you. They all joined the military with the best of intentions and eventually became disgusted by what they were expected to do, like so many of us."
After that, the meeting dissolve into a long-winded description of first Harry and Arden's flight off of Dathomir, although he was explained away as a stranded member of a sect of unique Force-users, their arrival on the Death Star, how they had found Mercer and prevented him from doing something supremely stupid and, eventually, how they had stumbled upon Leia.
"I'm sorry, are you saying you took the contents of an entire Imperial armoury?" interjected the clearly disbelieving Commander Willard. "If so, I know our quartermaster would be very interested."
This time, it was neither Harry nor Leia who answered; instead, it was Mercer who spoke up, as he shot Harry a glance that said, 'let me handle this,' and got a nod in return.
"And we would love to share," he began, though the upcoming but was quite predictable. "But we also have to think of the Morningstar and her crew. It's not credits we want, but services. I assume you have slicers and engineers?"
"Yes, we do," Dodonna conceded. "You want to barter, correct?"
"Correct, old boy. A company's worth of military-grade weapons, along with several pieces of officer armour and ten full suits of stormtrooper armour," Harry's self-appointed barter-master counted what he had available. "In return, your slicers unlock the biometric lock on the remaining ten sets of armour, allowing us to use it, and your engineers work on the Morningstar to allow us to switch transponder codes. Oh, and we need another cot; there are only four at the moment, and there's five of us."
OOOOOOOO
Harry was watching silently as people milled around his ship, both loading and unloading things, although the amount of stuff coming out vastly surpassed what was going in. In all honesty, he felt at a bit of a loose end. While Javoc, whose training as an Army technician was the closest they had to a starship engineer, was overseeing work on the Morningstar's transponder and Arden had decided to drop in on Luke's training with Kenobi, there was very little for him to do.
As he was daydreaming, he was suddenly tipped on the shoulder rather forcefully and, after only jumping out of his skin a tiny little bit, turned around to find Mercer grinning at him.
"Hey boss," the man greeted. "Fancy meeting you here; those Rebel techs really know their stuff and are already done with the first ten suits of armour. Thought maybe you'd want a hand in redesigning them a bit. Wouldn't want to look like bucketheads, would we?"
The young wizard snorted at the description, as much as he agreed with the content of what had been said.
"Sure, lead the way," he agreed, quickly following after the already moving deserter. "What did you have in mind?"
"We have two sets," Mercer commented enthusiastically. "I was thinking, two vastly different designs, five suits of armour each. That way, we can make one as intimidating as possible, use that when we're hunting a bounty, and the other could have the Rebel symbol on it somewhere. That way, if we fight alongside their people, we won't be shot at, which I count as a definite plus. Dodonna already allowed that."
They were moving past the lifts now, yet Mercer was still talking with as much fervour as he had started with. "First, I thought maybe a kama, a kind of skirt to protect us from shrapnel and such, might be a good idea, but that's a Mandalorian thing, and might piss them off, should we run into any. You don't want to piss off the Mandalorians if you can prevent it," he narrated, until they finally reached a door that he led Harry through.
"Eventually, I thought, why not do something that would allow us to hide our armour completely. Now, the standard stormtrooper armour is too bulky for that, but then I remembered, you could do this trans… what was it?"
"Transfiguration," Harry finished. "So, you want me to reform the armour, somehow? Won't that destroy some of the extra features you said it had?"
"Ah, now that is where the armourer of our new friends at the Rebellion comes in," Mercer explained, pointing at the man working on a workbench inside the room they had just entered. "He's willing to help us with stripping the components out of the helmets and then put them back in as soon as you've shaped them the way we want."
Harry looked at the two smiling men, excited like children in the face of doing something that had never been done before.
"I'll give it a try," the wizard acquiesced. "Do you have something disposable for me to practice on?"
OOOOOOOO
"They were not exaggerating about a company's worth of weapons," Willard whispered sharply, insistently looking at Dodonna. "They did all that, without back-up, without prior intelligence. Think of what they could do with the right resources."
"Still, you're talking about giving Alliance resources into the hands of a complete unknown," the old general cautioned. "And I don't believe for a second that story about this Harry, was complete. Yes, the Princess seems to know, but she also does not seem to be objective in this."
"Oh, please, you know me better than that, Jan. I was not thinking of giving him command of a squadron, or anything the like," the un-bearded man exclaimed. Well, as much as exclamation was possible while still whispering. "Just some intel that might lead into mutually beneficial situations, maybe allow them use of our safe-houses and repair yards."
Dodonna mulled that over for a while, worrying his lips in deep thought. "I'd still like to see how they play with a larger team," he mused. "What did Vernan say about that shipyard operation? The intel is good, but Cracken's infiltrators are busy elsewhere, right?"
OOOOOOOO
Inside a hidden hangar on Yavin 4, on the ground under the parked shape of his ship, Harry Potter was in a duel. More of a contest, really.
He was in a staring contest with a singed piece of plasteel.
It had quite obviously once been part of a stormtrooper's armour, until the soldier wearing it had been felled by the shot that had left its mark on the shoulder plate. Taking a deep breath, Harry closed his eyes to centre himself once again and think of the general principles guiding transfiguration.
The larger the change, the more skill and energy it takes.
Every increase in mass takes more energy.
If you want it to be permanent, you better plan on burning through a lot of your reserves.
There were of course simple spells, mostly used to teach beginners the groundwork, that managed to circumvent these conventions, simply because they were specifically designed for what they did, and the change was always concentrated on one particular aspect; porcupine to pincushion, match to needle, that kind of stuff.
As much as he had hated it earlier in his life, now he was wishing he had the ability to ask a few more questions of Professor McGonagall, as hard as explaining why he was asking these things might seem. That was when it hit him: he had a whole host of older, more experienced wizards right in his head, their memories just waiting to be used. Surprisingly, his new reality had somehow managed to keep him so busy that he had simply forgotten about that particular development his unplanned new lease on life had brought.
Determined, now, to find a solution, Harry delved into the hundreds, neigh thousands of years of memories that he would probably never manage to fully experience and could only learn about by reliving it alongside its originators, until he found what he was looking for.
He had been a blacksmith and artificer, sometimes jeweller, whose art had been sought near and far. Little did the superstitious people paying exorbitant sums for his craft know that they were patronising a man that, had they known about his secret, they would have tried to burn. Of particular comedic value had been the case of an inquisitor, a man who prided himself on sussing out sorcerers and apostates wherever they were, who happened to commission a silver cross. Obviously, the commission had been fulfilled, for the skilled smith had little interest in attracting the wrath of the 'Holy Inquisition', but he had added a little extra.
From that day onward, the inquisitor would regularly have to live through some of the worst diarrhoea imaginable.
Interesting, and entertaining as well, as that story had been, Harry was even more fascinated with how his ancestor had manipulated the form of his pieces of art by thought and wand alone. Indeed, he would always use as much raw material as was needed for his projects and would then simply rearrange the shape, allowing him to make the transfigurations permanent without much effort. The only thing that was absolutely necessary was a firm picture in the caster's mind of what exactly was to be formed.
Satisfied that he had a way of doing what he wanted to, Harry opened his eyes again to resume his staring contest with the singed shoulder plate.
OOOOOOOO
"How long has he been sitting there?"
"No idea."
"Is he asleep?"
"Maybe we should try waking him up."
"You know I can hear you, right?" Harry interjected. "And I'd really like to concentrate."
The voices of Arden and Leia fell silent, while the young wizard resumed staring at the piece of armour in front of him. He had thought long and hard about how to achieve what he wanted and had come to the conclusion that his smith ancestor's way was the one that would most likely lead to the kind of success.
"Alloios!" he commanded firmly, the new shape he wanted for the armour firmly in his mind, while also imagining the burn residue in a separate, small ball.
To his everlasting surprise, plasteel was a very different material than silver, gold and iron, after all, what he had imagined for his product was actually what he got. Where before there had been a singed shoulder plate now lay a small model of a phoenix, as pristinely white as a fresh piece of stormtrooper armour, the black residue of a blaster-burn scattered beside it where the small sphere he had formed it to fell to the ground.
"Awesome," he exclaimed, holding up the very solid piece of former armour. A spring in his step, the young wizard arose and sauntered over to the two women who had interrupted him only moments earlier.
"I managed to reshape the plate into this," he held up the phoenix statue as proof. "If Mercer has the designs ready and the others agree, I should be able to make us some great armour."
The two looked at the piece of plasteel in fascination. "What is that?" Leia finally managed to ask, tearing her eyes away from the intricate swing of the bird's wings and delicate features of its feathers. "I have never seen such a being before…"
"Where I come from, we call it a phoenix. It's a symbol of hope and purity of intent," he explained, thinking fondly of Fawkes and his soothing song. "When they die, they go up in flames and are reborn from the ashes."
Looking into the faces of the two women, Harry was struck by how silent they had become. And while Arden was simply smirking a little, her gaze alternating between the other two, Leia seemed to have been affected rather profoundly.
"The phoenix is the symbol of the Rebellion," she finally whispered. "A way to honour the memory of a man who died to bring it about." She pointed toward the red symbols visible throughout the Rebel base, which Harry had only taken in passingly, before.
"Yeah, it does look a bit like a phoenix," he admitted, then turned back to Leia with a smile. "Here, you take it. Take it to remember that, as dark as things may be at times, they will get better."
The orphan Princess of Alderaan took the little statue almost reverently, and before Harry could say any more, she quickly turned around and fled toward the lifts. He was just about to follow, when a hand on his shoulder held him back.
"Trust me, she wants to be alone right now," Arden advised emphatically. "Leia has to appear strong at all times, and she will want to do things on her own terms, right now. If you want to do something, go meet Mercer and the two of you can play with your toys."
As much as it pained him to do so, Harry had to admit she was right. He had been in similar moods before, and he had always needed some time on his own before he could let someone drag him out of his dark hole. Instead, he went to look for Mercer.
Unsurprisingly, he found the former Imperial still in energetic conversation with the Rebels' armourer/quartermaster, both of them bowed deeply over a set of schematics they were obviously working on.
"Ah, Harry, fancy seeing you here," his crewmember greeted jovially. "Tell me, did it work?"
Rather proud of himself for adapting his ancestor's tricks for his own use, Harry nodded. "Excellent," the older man exclaimed, holding out the datapad he and the quartermaster had been looking at.
"Merlin, that looks scary," the wizard commented after catching himself in being quite shaken by the new aesthetic Mercer was going for.
"That's why you can take off the mask," the Rebel offered. "But we figured, if the Imps can use psychological warfare, so can we. You didn't think it was an accident the stormtrooper helmets look like skulls, did you?"
"Haven't really thought about it," Harry admitted. "So, you want me to make this? Do we have enough material? Otherwise it will leave me incredibly tired."
"We should have enough," Mercer confirmed. "Since we're not mass-producing the stuff, I could take individual measurements for everyone, and we can build the breastplate out of more interlocked parts. Should make movement that much easier."
"Also, Ethkay here said he'll allow us to use some of his stock if we make him a suit too," he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "We'll have all of the standard features of stormtrooper armour, plus a built-in rebreather."
Leaning into the huddle, a grinning Harry finally, if rather silently, proclaimed, "Let's get started then."
OOOOOOOO
Eleven suits of former stormtrooper armour being transfigured later, Harry was completely wiped out. Despite his earlier cockiness, permanently reforming not only the plasteel, but also the magnetic insulation inside the helmets, had taken a lot out of him. Heedlessly, the young wizard stumbled into the thankfully dark room on his ship that contained the single bed.
Only problem, as he let himself fall onto the surprisingly comfortable mattress, there already was a warm body occupying the space. A small shriek of surprise, and some indignation, told him that it was Leia.
As he activated the lights to apologise profoundly, he was stricken by how worn-out and sad the normally vivacious young woman looked. Quickly, he dimmed the lights so she might feel a bit more comfortable.
"Sorry," she mumbled in a small voice. "I wanted to be alone, but also not alone, maybe talk to you, but everyone kept coming into my room, so I hid here."
Seeing Leia like this was profoundly unsettling to Harry; there were some tear-streaks on her face and her eyes were red, heavy bags underneath. He was immediately on guard, having a rather mixed history with crying women as he did, and not even having thousands of years of life-experience stuffed into his head was enough to make him feel better about it. That was especially true since he had mostly concentrated on learning and emulating the skills of the people whose lives he remembered and tuned out during the actual 'living'; anything else would have felt too much like peeping.
Still, he let himself sink down on the bed next to Leia and put an arm around her should that he hoped would be at least somewhat comforting. Apparently, it was, as the distraught newly orphaned girl immediately leaned into the embrace, letting her head rest on Harry's shoulder. Usually, he often felt small, both in metaphorical, but also quite literal a sense. Neither his father nor his mother had been overly large, yet next to Leia's petite form he felt almost gigantic.
"I keep thinking that, maybe, if I had just told them where our base was, that just maybe Alderaan would still be there," she mumbled into Harry's shoulder, covered in the fabric of his shirt which was now quickly growing wet with warm tears. "Maybe he just didn't believe me about Dantooine…"
He squeezed the upper arm he held in his hand a little in a gesture of comfort before he responded verbally. "You tried telling Tarkin Dantooine was the secret base?" Leia nodded against his shoulder. "Then why did he destroy Alderaan anyway?"
"He said that Dantooine was too remote to make its destruction notable enough," she replied silently. "Still, he could have lied to me, right? Never believed me about it in the first place."
Harry was already shaking his head when he realised, she would not be able to see the gesture. "Remember, he thought you were going to be dead, soon," he reminded gently. "I can tell you from personal experience that is when the bad guys get overly confident and start spewing truths, they should have kept secret."
Despite herself, the distraught young woman leaning against his shoulder giggled a bit; it was a tiny sound, but it was there, and it was like a ray of sunshine in her dour mood. Without thinking much of the implications or possible consequences, only aware of how bloody tired he was, Harry began shuffling the two of them back onto the bed until they were both lying there, him using a cushion to prop up his head, and her using him as a cushion.
"What did you tell me about Alderaan? A rebellious planet, deeply committed to democracy, its resistance group one of the founding members of the Alliance," he went on soothingly. "And the Tarkin Doctrine, rule through fear. Do you really think the Alderaanians would have stopped resisting after the destruction of the Alliance? Because I certainly don't."
There was a proud smile on Leila's face for a second as she thought about the spirit of her people, and she shook her head. As much as that was possible, at least, given her position cuddled up to Harry on a single bed.
"So then, Yavin being in the middle of nowhere, would not have made for a compelling target to instil fear in the more rebellious citizens," the wizard continued to analyse; he was sadly reminded of another foe using scare-tactics the likes of these. Killing Amelia Bones had served Voldemort well in planting fear inside the minds of the ordinary witch and wizard. "No, at least one important, populous planet would have had to be destroyed. You ask me, Tarkin wanted to destroy Alderaan regardless of what you told him."
"Sounds reasonable," the woman cuddled into his shoulder mumbled, although it was no longer a sad, and instead more of an exhausted tone. Moments later, Harry heard the even breathing of sleep, and he tried to extricate himself from her. Yet, at every attempt he made, she would make some forlorn noise and grapple for his arm.
With the eventual acceptance of the fact that he would not get away came the realisation that he did not really want to. And within moments of that realisation came a deep and restful sleep.