Going Off the Rails Chapter Two FIN (Patreon)

I am not Disney nor British. I know how to world-build and write for a specific audience.

This is the REVAMPED, full chapter.

It has been fully Grammarlied. It has also been gone over by Ajm2.  Thank him for his efforts people, and curse Yahoo’s email service for sending the email from him with his edits to the trash, where I did not think to look for it until he said he’d sent it to me.  The same can be said for Climbing Together.  I will be going over that first thing tomorrow morning, and then finish the last scene of Magic. I’ve been told my first version of it sucked.  But the rest of the chapter is done, and even Grammarlied.  Not bad considering I lost most of the day yesterday to another toddler/baby related issue LOL.

As for this chapter, I added more to the previous Harry segment, expanding on his thoughts, then on Daphne’s, and then more at the end of the Harry and co. segment with Tonks, their thoughts going forward, and so forth, including one big addition coming straight from Tonks. All told, I think there’s around three thousand more words in the that HP segment, and then I added another segment to show another pit of survival-type HP centric stuff.  Another 7,000 words or so there.

Third, I made a few changes to the Aayla POV and a bit elsewhere.

Fourth, and a big one, I rewrote the fight with Sidious.  For that, I want to give a shout-out to Beleriond.  Above and beyond looking at the outline and the poll I put up about what you all wanted to see, he and I spoke about that scene, and he pointed out the combat style mistake I was making with Sidious. 

This is important. I have upped Barriss Offee’s age. Canonically, as on the wiki, this is all happening in the year 35 BBY (might have said 36 before, my bad). That is, 35 years Before Battle of Yavin. Barriss was, um, in canon this would make her five years old. Ahsoka’s one year old, for those wondering. Considering what I plan for Barriss in terms of joining the romance, I am upping her age to 11 at this point, more in line with Aayla than Ahsoka, as in canon. Mind you, romance is always up in the air at this early in a fic to a certain point. See Hela in ATP, Akeno’s return in FILFy, no one joining Shaak/Ranma and a few others. I’m still wondering which: Daphne, Hermione or Angelina, to include in the pairing too, so give me your thoughts on that score once more. Luna too, but I also have another romance option for her that will be a perfect fit when we get to the segment of the work that heads to Dathomir.

Off the Rails Chapter 2: While you were Sleeping…

Unaware of the mass of events which had, like ripples in a pond, followed the impact of their arrival to this new dimension, the majority of the teens slept through the night without concern, too exhausted mentally and physically to even dream. Even Roger and Luna, ostensibly on guard, had both fallen asleep a bare few hours after the others had.  After the day they’d had, that was almost inevitable.

Alone of the group, Harry, his magic once more nearly buzzing inside him, didn’t sleep. Instead, he stayed up with Hedwig, who also didn’t seem to need to sleep, either because of her nocturnal nature or because she, like Harry, was feeling the impact of this place. His fingers slowly stroked through her feathers as the pair stared out into the rain from around the awning the twins had constructed, sitting with their backs against one of the cave’s walls. Soon, as Hedwig continued to keep an eye out for anything dangerous - or small and squeaky, Harry wasn’t sure which had more priority - the pre-teen let his mind wander over the events of the day.

When he was in his so-called relative’s house, Harry had often liked the sound of rain.  It soothed him and, at the same time, kept Petunia from sending Harry out to work the garden, and Dudley from chasing Harry around outside. That meant, during the day, all he’d need to do chore-wise was meals. 

Yet this storm was nothing like what he had seen before. This storm made it look like the sky had declared war on the ground, the rain coming down so hard and heavy that the very air thrummed with it, like an artillery barrage he had once seen in a history video. To say nothing of the sheer amount of lightning that began soon after they reached the cave, accompanied by thunder crashing in the distance.  

So much lightning and so much rain, Harry knew, would have eventually torn them all off their brooms.  Or, worse, being so high up would have meant the displaced wizards and witches would have become the natural targets of the lightning.

It was clear to Harry that they had reached the safety of the cave just in time. It was almost as if the Point-me spell (and Harry wasn’t certain calling it a spell was all that accurate, really) had taken into account how far they could go when it directed Harry, Daphne and Luna to the cave.

Sitting there alone, Harry set aside such complicated thoughts soon after Roger and Luna had nodded off, just losing himself in watching. The power of the storm called to him, the primal nature of weather unleashed, almost tugging at his mind and magic alike. And yet, despite the turmoil outside, Harry felt at peace. This place, this adventure, it called to him, as if it was welcoming them all, and regardless of how they got here, it felt… natural.

Harry felt he fit here naturally. He hadn’t felt like that in the magical world, when he’d entered Diagon Alley. He hadn’t felt it on the train before the accident or whatever had sent them here. 

Being here also had made him whole. Now that he had time to think, Harry felt that on an instinctual level.  Something within him had been broken, or an inner wall had kept Harry from some measure of his being.  It was an utterly bizarre feeling, a sensation he could not explain, yet knew for a fact. As if Harry had suddenly gone from having trouble breathing all his life, the strain so normal he didn’t know it was there, to doing so without pain or effort.

This place, or their arrival here, had somehow… somehow fixed something inside of him.  Now, Harry fit here like he had always been here.  It was weird, it was bizarre, but Harry could not deny that feeling. Did his new friends feel the same way? Did they too feel whole here? Somehow, Harry doubted it.

Harry didn’t know how long he sat there, but eventually the night sky started to lighten. Very little in the way of light came through the storm clouds and the insanely intense rain, but enough did to make Harry realize he’d stayed up the rest of the night.

Even so, Harry made no move to wake up someone else to take over his post. Instead, Harry reeled in his mind, pushing back against the simple enjoyment of the the thrum of his magic, the pull from the power in the rain and the strange sense of belonging that infused him, instead turning his thoughts to what the future might hold, going through the events since the accident and what the group would need to survive.

As he did, a bit of excitement went through him.  Surviving on this world was almost certainly going to hard and dangerous, but they had magic. Surely it would help take care of a lot of the normal problems they would face in such a situation? Further, experimenting with it sounded fun, way more fun than anything he was ever able to do back with the Dursleys.

I wonder what secrets about magic we’ll learn here that aren’t in all those books? I think… I think magic here is different from back home, not just stronger, but different. I… I’m not certain how to put it into words, but the feeling’s there. I think Miss Angelina’s got the right of it when she said that essays, theories and what-have-you won’t be important here. We need to learn more about what we can and can’t do with magic, and we can do that best by, well, doing.

First, Luna and I proved the two of us don’t need wands, but is that going to be true for everyone? Or will some of the others still need them? What about those rune things that Miss Angelina mentioned? She seemed really certain we needed every book about them we could find, and really enthusiastic about them in general.  

Harry had no idea what runes were beyond a vague idea that they were an old written language. Harry thought they were something like Egyptian hieroglyphs, another thing that Harry had seen on a history show.

The Dursleys had never let anything to do with fantasy or ‘made-up nonsense’ into their home, and he’d never been able to explore the local libraries or even the school library very long before Dudley would come and make trouble that would get both of them forced to leave. He had been tempted to ask, but given everything else going on, it hadn’t seemed the time.

And potions too; Neville and Blaise both mentioned them, and I tried to read some of the potions book we were assigned since Hagrid took me to get them. We’ve got what ingredients we could find among the wreck, but I think we’re going to have to experiment and try to find alternatives. 

Hmmm… looking back on it, I only followed like… half of the stuff the others thought were interesting beyond the books? Harry grimaced. My fault, I guess. As a leader, or whatever, I should know about everything we’ve got, right?

Beyond any others rattling around in his brain, that thought still astonished Harry, and he shook his head. I still don’t get that. I guess I stepped up, but that was because we were all in danger, and I had to.  After, well, again, we all just needed to get going.  Anyone could have done that, really. But now that we’re safe, I kind of hope Miss Angelina and Mister Roger take over. Why would anyone look to me to lead them, especially if they don’t believe that whole Boy Who Lived brain rot, like Blaise called it?  The two of them are older, better trained; surely that means they should be the leaders, right?

As if sensing her person’s thoughts, Hedwig turned from gazing unblinkingly out into the rainfall, her beak gently nipping at his fingers.  Somehow, looking down at her, Harry could tell that Hedwig knew why he was thinking like that and wanted him to admit it and move on.

To this, Harry could only sigh faintly as he admitted, And, okay, people just caring for me is still new to me. I knew Hagrid liked me because he liked my parents, and I know Hedwig loves me because I can feel it, and I love her back.  At that, Hedwig fluffed up her feathers and turned back, as if embarrassed, but Harry didn’t tease his stoic friend for it, knowing he’d get embarrassed too, like he had been when Luna hugged him out of the blue and called him her friend. Although embarrassing, I have to admit it was really nice... the hug, too. So was Hermione calling me her friend. I suppose I could get used to it, but that’s a long way from having people look for leadership from me.

Harry had developed several survival skills in his time with the Dursleys, above and beyond the ability to cook and pick out weeds from grass.  He knew that making himself small, that hiding away and keeping out of sight was the best thing for him, and that he needed to obey authority, as doing otherwise would cause him to be punished by the Dursleys. Well, more than I would be for just breathing, that is.

People looking at him with anything but negative feelings was weird. People looking to him as some kind of authority or protector was weirder. Now that the crisis was over though, Harry felt he’d be much more comfortable fading into the background.  But will the others let me? It doesn’t seem like it. And, and is being comfortable like that a good thing? Or a bad thing? Do… do I want to be in the background… or is that just my instincts from living with the Dursleys talking?

Another, far gentler, nip from Hedwig told Harry her feelings on that matter, but Harry was still undecided. Feeling his thoughts run in circles, he decided to think about something else. Specifically, something more important than his feelings. Are we really safe here? I mean, I haven’t seen any animals out there, but there might be some that’ll come out after the rain passes.

 Well, Harry snorted just a tiny bit as he remembered one particular storybook from school. Unless this is a Noah’s Ark kind of situation? Then we might have even more trouble. Staring out into the rain, he decided not to think about that.  Given the amount of rain coming down, it might be an all-too-accurate idea, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, regardless of his dreams about just reaching out into the power of the storm and somehow controlling it.

What about food? We’ve got some, sure, but how long will it last? Hermione was right, too. It’s mostly snacks, sugar and chocolate. Nothing there with a lot of vitamins, proteins and what-have-you we learned about in school that our bodies need.

What about diseases and stuff? Neville taught us a spell to keep bugs away, but what about actual animal bites or even airborne germs? I don’t think soap is going to be enough on a planet like this one, and I don’t think we have any of that either… Do we? Harry thought about it, then figured the girls at least would have brought along their own shampoo, as that seemed to be something girls talked about a lot.  That stuff can do for soap in a pinch, right? And don’t some girls bring along their own soap to school too? 

Shaking his head free of what girls may or may not bring to a boarding school, Harry redirected his mind back to the problems at hand. Then there’s Poison Ivy or the equivalent, and… well, heat exposure too. I remember fainting several times when I was out in the Dursleys' garden. Here it’s been too dang muggy for that kind of thing, but ooh, what about just the sun? UGH. Getting burned that one time was way worse than fainting!

Harry’s thoughts came to a sudden halt as he suddenly felt as if someone was looking at him. It didn’t feel like whoever it was, and he was certain it was a person rather than an animal, was feeling angry.  The person looking at him felt more confused and sad than anything else.  Wait, how do I know that?  

In her makeshift bed, Daphne Greengrass had begun the somewhat halting, lengthy process of waking up moments before when someone snoring nearby finally intruded on her mind. She wasn’t very much of a morning person at the best of times, and the physical, emotional and mental exhaustion of the day before had certainly not been the best of times. However, even after her mind had come fully awake, Daphne stayed where she was for a moment, simply watching Harry from behind as he stroked his owl’s head, before slowly pushing out of her sleeping bag to join him.

As she did, she noticed Roger was asleep at his post and also the source of the snoring, which had finally worked its way into her brain. Wherever is Luna? But oh, that is so unattractive, she thought, amusement dancing through her mind, although I’m not exactly surprised that I could sleep through it for so long. Morgana knows that I dealt with that kind of thing from Tracy often enough.

The thought of her best friend had Daphne pausing, half crouched as she got out of her sleeping bag, before she pushed the thought of Tracy away. Of the fact that Tracy’s head had been crushed during the disaster. If she thought of it too long, Daphne knew she would lose control.

Push it down, be cold, feel nothing. Only let your emotions out if you are alone, and even then, do not cry. Crying is for the weak. Daphne could almost hear her father intone, his voice cold as always, while he looked at her from across his large desk as she stood on the thick carpet, her spine straight, staring him in the eye. You are a Greengrass. Crying is what you cause among your enemies, business and social alike. We are as cold as the northern winds and as untouchable.

That had been the mantra since she began teething.  Not even as a toddler had she been allowed to show anything but perfect poise and silence in public. To whine, to cry, or argue was to be punished by loss of privileges or worse, punishment.

But why, though? A small voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Tracy’s asked, as she always did when the brunette thought her friend was being too serious for her own good.  Ever since they had first met and become the oddest of friends, Tracy had tried to break down Daphne’s walls and had succeeded to a degree that would have appalled her father if he’d ever learned of it. He never had, though. Keeping the fact that the alliance he had wanted her to forge with the Davis heiress had turned into a real friendship had been her first, and greatest, act of rebellion. Indeed, beyond things like asking the house elves to sneak her sweets, it was the only one that Daphne had allowed herself, wanting to shield her younger sister from her parents’ perfectionism as much as possible.

No one here cares about that pureblood nonsense! Her inner Tracy laughed wildly, just like she had the time they’d gone up on a broomstick together for the first time. There’s no politics here. You don’t have any enemies, not with that idiot Flint running off to get himself killed. There isn’t even anyone you have to make friends with to show your family’s neutral status. According to Lovegood and Johnson, this is probably an entirely new dimension. So why not start new?

For a few moments, Daphne just crouched there, struggling to think through that thought and through the building sadness about Tracy’s death rising within her. Because as much as she knew Tracy would not like her to be sad, it was there. Her only friend was gone, and that was something Daphne could not laugh about, even though Tracy had thought everything in life was a laugh.

Eventually, Daphne pushed it all down, turning it into more ice in her mind, protecting her real feelings from discovery and her expression from losing control.  With that, she opened her eyes only to find Harry had turned to look at her. That caused her to start a bit, but when he held a finger to his lips, Daphne nodded, trying to ignore her pounding heart or the look of compassion in those emerald eyes.

When Harry motioned for her to join him, she stood up and made her way over as she had originally planned, trying to act as if her moment of hesitation hadn’t happened.

For his part, Harry studied Daphne for a moment as she made her way toward the entrance, taking in her features more than he had since they first met back in the wreckage of the train. Thanks to the four hovering lights that Roger had created during the night, which had yet to go out, Harry could see her quite clearly.

Daphne reminded Harry somewhat of a documentary he had once put on while he was cleaning the Dursleys’ first floor, as Dudley watched some kind of history documentary. It’d been about Vikings, and it had shown several kings and queens and so forth. Daphne looked like an admittedly much younger Viking Princess, all cool control and penetrating stare with blonde hair and, well, an extremely pretty face, something Harry couldn’t stop himself from noticing.  Even if her hair was way more wild and uncontrolled now than it was when we first met.

More importantly, Harry had seen her freeze in place for a moment, her eyes going wide and unseeing.  He had… he wasn’t certain if he had seen or felt her confusion and grief, but he was certain that after a moment both had disappeared. Pushed down like Harry always pushed down his frustration and pain when with the Dursleys, only… cooler? Colder? Harry wasn’t certain where that thought came from, but perhaps because of the ice magic she had used, it seemed to fit.

Harry set such observations to the side as Daphne joined him, sitting down next to him on the other side from where Luna had slipped down to place her head against the side of his leg. His legs were quite asleep by this point as he’d kept still to not wake her. He had been embarrassed by it at the time, particularly with the amused hoot Hedwig had given. But that feeling had soon faded to nothing as he stared out into the rain, his mind entering that odd floating frame of mind he’d felt for most of the night.

Daphne also looked around Harry at Luna’s sleeping and one eyebrow raised, but she showed no further reaction. “How long have you been the only one awake?” she whispered, gesturing with her chin at Roger.

“Since well before dawn. I can’t, I don’t think I’d be able to sleep, really. My magic, it’s buzzing too much, if that makes sense? It’s no longer demanding I use it, but it is, it’s fueling me somehow, I guess?”

Daphne thought about it for a moment, then closed her eyes and examined her own magical reserves. This was a prelude to a magical discipline called Occlumency. As she had yet to become even a teenager, to say nothing of fully forming her own mind, Daphne couldn’t use the full form, but she had been taught many of the stages leading up to it, including rigid emotional control and keeping an outer shell up at all times, something she had connected to that emotional control.

Now, she used her meditation training to examine her magical core and found it completely full. Indeed, it was almost bursting. She wouldn’t describe it as buzzing, but Daphne also noticed that she wasn’t feeling very hungry just yet. Which, considering they’d only had snacks in the past… twenty-four hours? More? That was saying something. Interesting. That certainly links to Luna’s thoughts about the background magic of this place.

Daphne also noticed that her hands, which had been sore and aching from hanging onto her broomstick, along with some other aches and pains, were all healed. Her magic had healed her, something that she had only rarely seen when she was younger. That kind of thing was supposed to stop, though, when you were old enough to start consciously directing your magic through your wand. Daphne said that aloud, and Harry shrugged.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about that. I think, well, looking back on my life after I found out I had magic, I think my magic did a lot of things for me, to keep me healthy. Helping me heal faster was definitely one of them. And… Well, maybe helped me regrow my hair when my relatives gave me this horrible haircut.”

Harry paused suddenly, wondering why he had shared that first bit, before deciding that it had simply slipped out. The night of introspection and silent contemplation of the storm had put Harry in a very strange frame of mind before he’d started to think about their current issues.

“We call that kind of thing wylde magic in my household. I remember when I had a wylde magic moment; I changed the meal we were eating from this vegan bit of nonsense into chicken feed.  It was the first time I saw my father smile when people beyond family were about,” Daphne admitted, not commenting on what Harry had just let slip about magic helping him heal faster. “One of the only times, to boot.”

Blinking as she had not intended to add that last, Daphne hastily looked down at Hedwig, raising a hand to stroke the bird’s wings. Hedwig preened, enjoying the attention, and Daphne allowed a faint smile to appear on her face, her inner ice cracking just a little bit more as she found her fingers being nibbled on. “She’s beautiful. Is she your familiar? I told you all about Herodotus, but he wasn’t my familiar like this pretty girl seems to be for you.”

Remembering how Daphne had described what had happened to her owl, Harry winced. “I’m sorry,” he said automatically.

Daphne looked up again, confused. “For what?”

“I, I just… I think all of this is because of me,” Harry confessed. That had occurred to him during the night, and he’d put it aside, but now with one of the other kids in front of him, he felt he had to bring it up. “I mean, well, it doesn’t take much thought, right? The Boy Who Lived comes to Hogwarts, and suddenly something like this happens with the Express? And, and Hagrid told me that Voldemort had a lot of supporters that were out there.”

“Don’t… I was about to say, you shouldn’t use his real name. He created a Taboo on it, which allowed him to find those who did and murder them. But not only has he been dead long enough for that to not matter, but there’s also all this, isn’t there?” Daphne mused, her eyes going unfocused as she gestured out to the world beyond the cave. 

Then those exceptionally dark blue eyes flashed for a moment as they locked back on Harry, another feeling having pushed through her inner ice. In this case, it was annoyance and anger, though the anger didn’t last long. It isn’t as if I can personally take revenge on whoever caused this disaster, after all.

“So, you think someone created that disaster on purpose? I had thought that myself. Yet even if that is the case, it’s certainly not your fault,” She said aloud.  “It is altogether the fault of the person or people behind whatever happened to the train. Taking on any kind of guilt yourself for it is stupid, Harry Potter. And I refuse to associate with, let alone be led by someone stupid.”

Harry twitched, almost flinching back away from Daphne, but her glare had him frozen as if she were a snake and Harry a particularly foolish squeaky thing. He could somehow sense she was sincere and even meant well, but the chill she gave off was weird to deal with. Hermione was easier; her eagerness to prove herself and help reminded Harry of himself in some ways.

Even Luna, with all her insistence on hugging him, was easier than dealing with this extremely self-controlled young girl who acted much older than she looked. And who, Harry’s mind pointed out to him again despite his best efforts to stop it, was quite pretty, in a haughty, regal sort of way. Despite how messed up her hair is.

“I will hear no more about your supposed guilt, or about something that someone else did because of your presence, Harry Potter. It is not a sin to be alive. It has never been a crime to survive,” Daphne continued, staring hard into Harry’s eyes.

Something in her tone made Harry nod convulsively, knowing instinctively that she wasn’t saying that just about himself, but about something deeply personal. He wondered what caused that intensity, but he could no more argue with it than he could stand against the tide. “Er, r… right.”

“Good.” Daphne looked back down at Hedwig, whose knowing gaze very much did not make her feel any less embarrassed. Ugh, I’ve heard that familiars become more intelligent the more powerful the wizard is and the deeper the bond, but that is just ridiculous.

“Um… Do, do you want to talk about it?” Harry asked. “Er, in all the movies and books I’ve read, keeping things inside is never good for you.”

Daphne stiffened, her walls coming up again, but Harry reached over, touching her shoulder for a second. That brief, touch somehow slid through Daphne’s fraying control, warming her ice-cold mind, and she found herself leaning into it as Harry continued talking.

“I’m not going to judge you or anything. I just think you need to, to grieve.  For Herodotus, and, and everything.  I don’t because, well, I didn’t lose anything I’ll really miss, but you and the others…”

“…Those books of yours would not have met my parents’ approval,” Daphne muttered, looking away. “I… I lost a friend in the accident. Tracy. She, she died right in front of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I don’t, or, I guess I didn’t know what a friend was, let alone had one myself.  But losing someone close to you can’t have been easy. But if you’re controlling yourself because of that, well…” He gestured lightly to the cave around them.  “This place is supposedly safe, right?  I don’t… I’m not saying you need to cry or anything, but letting yourself grieve…” 

“My self-control doesn’t come from that, no, that’s a symptom, you could say, not the cause.” Daphne explained, feeling as if Harry’s words were pulling out her own.  It wasn’t magic or anything else, but the look of understanding in Harry’s expressive eyes after everything was enough to dig through her typical defenses like a polar bear trying to make a burrow.

“I, for the longest time, Tracy and my sister were the only ones who didn’t demand I be ice, be cold. Blaise mentioned my nickname, Ice Princess? It's hereditary: Ice princess or prince. We are Greengrasses. We are of the north; we are the best at everything we do, and we are always in control of ourselves and everything around us as much as possible. No one can read us; no one can see our thoughts or our emotions. It’s a way of life.  One that my sister’s going to be forced into now that I’m gone.  That worries me, but I know I can’t do anything about it, unfortunately.”

“That, that sounds like a lot of pressure. I, I know a bit about expectations and being forced into a mold.  Were they, did they ever…”

Realizing what Harry was implying, Daphne shook her head. “No. They didn’t need to. Cold voices, chill glances, magical punishments for lapses in control once I reached a certain age, mostly stinging charms or sensory deprivation charms.  No marks left, just discipline instilled, and control enforced to the point it became second nature.” Daphne shook her head.  “I know they aren’t here, but the lessons won’t leave me.”

“I, I understand.  My own lessons… be small, be quiet, obey. It’s hard to forget.” Harry muttered, his own words nowhere near as coherent as Daphne’s but understandable all the same.

So much for all that business about the Boy Who Lived living in a castle, Daphne’s inner Tracy snorted, while the rest of Daphne had already made a similar realization to what Harry had implied to her. And, despite a large part of her brain screaming at her that it was none of her business, that she should keep her thoughts to herself as always, she still asked, “Did they… did they beat you?”

“Yes.” Harry nearly blurted it out, hastily, trying to get the admission over with, but instead, it sat there between them for a moment, raw and harsher than such a simple word should ever be. Then Harry, in true British fashion, tried to make a joke of it. “I don’t suppose a stinging charm feels like a swat on your head, does it?”

“It can, or worse, depending on the power put into the charm. My parents also somehow added heat to it. As if they’d hit me with something heated to the point of being uncomfortable all on its own. My father liked to use it on my cheek, my mother on the small of my back.  Only when I failed at being the best at something, or showed some emotion outside of my room, did they go beyond that kind of thing. Spells that would take away my ability to speak, to see, or to move.”

The two of them fell silent again, united in shared misery for a moment, then Hedwig decided they’d had enough of such maudlin thoughts. She cut in, headbutting Harry in the chest, before pulling at a bit of Daphne’s hair. 

Breaking their locked gaze, Harry was once more the one to try and push on quickly with a joke. “Um, here’s to the Shite Home Life Club, I guess?”

This time, thankfully, the joke didn’t fall flat, if only because his attempt was so bad that Daphne, like seeing a baby bird fall out of a tree, could not stop herself from helping it back into its nest. “Here, here,” she answered, miming holding up a cup for a toast.

She then looked at him closely.  “Also, if you’re thinking of going back to being quiet, to just following the group, don’t.  I…” She paused, cutting off what she had been about to say, which was, ‘I won’t let you,’ which sounded far too personal. “I think I speak for us all when I say you proved to be the best leader when we’re in danger. I don’t think any of us will look to anyone else to lead us if there’s an immediate problem to solve."

Flushing, Harry decided to shoot back for some reason. “And you too, you know? Here, you can start over and be your own person. No one can live their life frozen, and now you don’t have to.  You need some sun and life too, you know?” he licked his lips, then added hesitantly, not knowing where the words or the courage came from but knowing it was the right thing to say regardless. “And, and would Tracy want you to push away your grief, or acknowledge it and move on?”

“…Tracy would have said the same thing, if in a somewhat cornier manner,” Daphne smiled faintly before nodding. “I, I’ll think about it. Some things, some things might be too deeply embedded.  But, thank you, Harry.  You’re right.  At least here, no one will judge me for being less than what my parents demanded me to be.”

Harry nodded, understanding that feeling. For a moment, they looked at one another and smiled, then Daphne, feeling embarrassed again, shifted the topic. “Now, tell me about your magic yesterday. How were you able to use spells like that? They were well beyond what I would expect most adult wizards and witches to be able to do, without a wand to boot. You then were able to do the anti-bug spell with just your fingers and create your own version of a Point Me spell.”

Harry eagerly explained what he had been feeling from his magic since coming into this world: as if it had been behind some kind of wall and then had simply begun to flow out into him, buzzing with power. He explained how it was as if his magic wanted to be used, wanted to be called upon, and responded to his thoughts and visualization.

He did not bring up the pain he’d felt when he’d first arrived, and he didn’t mention the gunk that had dripped out of his curse scar. His mind still shied away from that memory of pain like a beaten dog, and he just could not bring himself to think about it right now, despite knowing that what had happened to him was in no way normal.

Daphne listened as, behind them, some of the others began to stir. Taking in what he said, then turned resolutely towards the cave entrance. “Let me try it.”

For several moments she stared, doing nothing, just staring, her brows furrowing.

Harry watched for a few minutes, his thoughts stumbling once more over how pretty Daphne was in the light of Roger’s magical lights. Then, as nothing happened, he hesitantly asked, “Um, what spell are you trying, er, that is, what effect are you trying to um… imprint, I guess, on the world?”

“Imprint or create, either would work. As for the spell, I was trying to recreate your golem.” Daphne answered, her eyes not leaving the expanse of rain outside. Rather, they had narrowed in intensity.

“Um… then, it’s, I think, magic at its core is all about imagination and will,” Harry explained, his words speeding up in his enthusiasm and becoming clearer. “Create an image, but don’t try to link it to a word and don’t try to just copy mine. You’ve never seen Hagrid. Just gather your will, imagine the effect you want, then let your magic flow out of you. Flow out like the magic of this place is constantly flowing in.”

Frowning a bit, Daphne nodded, and slowly the image she wanted changed. She had wanted to craft something huge, like the golem that Harry had created, only the image hadn’t stuck in her mind; Harry was right about that. No, what she found there was ice. An ice golem, then? She thought, amused, the chill within her mind and soul cracking still further. Morgana, but Tracy would’ve loved teasing me about that. Hmm… then how about a giant snowman, like that strange Frosty creature I saw on a poster at Tracy’s once?

A smile on her face, Daphne allowed her mind to go back to the time when the two of them had spent time in Tracy’s room together without any adult supervision, feeling a warmth infuse her being, offsetting the icy walls of her self-control. Then, just as the image started to take shape, something interrupted her. Out in the rain, there was a stirring, a presence that both young folk felt somehow in a way that neither could explain.

Staring in that direction, Daphne and Harry both stood up, moving further out from behind the awning, with Hedwig flapping up to Harry’s shoulder. Luna found her head thumping lightly on the stone floor of the cave for a second. She snorted awake just as a roar reverberated out from whatever creature was coming towards their cave. That bellow woke everyone else, but before even Harry could do anything, Daphne clapped her hands together in front of her, pushing them outward at the same time, a near-manic grin suddenly crossing her features.

In a rush, she let out her ice, her grief, her sadness at Tracy’s death, her horror at what her sister would be forced to become in a rush, with a single, all-consuming thought controlling her will, directing her imagination.  “FREEZEEEE…” she hissed, imagining the world outside to be as cold and unemotional as her parents had always wanted her to be.  FUCK YOU, FATHER! FUCK YOU, MOTHER! 

Instead of the playful image she’d had in her mind before the presence came close, all the cold within her, all her already cracking self-control, flowed out in a wave of arctic wind and ice.

The beast outside in the torrential rain was a six-legged praying mantis with a very odd head, taller and armed with serrated mandibles. Because of course it was. Yet despite how dangerous it was, before it got close enough to attack, the monster was caught by Daphne’s expanding cold front. Its limbs instantly began to freeze as if they had been stuck in liquid nitrogen, even as it was pushed backward by the ever-expanding ice, which rapidly began to grow over its body.

It shrieked, trying to wrench its way out, but Daphne clenched her hands, the image shifting in her mind to include the imagery needed for the ice spike spell. Under her will, the ice shifted form, slamming numerous pointed ice needles up into the creature, puncturing its hide in dozens of places.

As blood seeped out to join the rain pouring down, Daphne stared at the creature, feeling no remorse. The thing had come to eat them after all, and no predator entered a fight without knowing that it could be their last. No, what she felt was more like what Harry had described, as if there had been a wall between her and her emotions, and now it was… not gone, but far less thick and imposing than before.

Daphne could even feel her grief about Tracy and her worries about Astoria, and rather than making her panic, it made her just… sad.  Not worried or horrified, but just… sad, as if she was thinking about something she couldn’t change or do anything about.

She nodded, then let her hands relax back to her sides, breathing a few times before she turned her gaze on Harry, a smile flashing across her face for just a moment. “Well, that was fascinating! And somewhat therapeutic.”

“Er, well, that’s good then.  Don’t know about being very, um, good for you in general though,” Harry said, half-teasing, half-worried, to which Daphne had to bite back another smile.

“Even from back here it was fascinating to watch, my dear. But you’re not exactly disproving your Ice Princess label,” Blaise drawled. “Indeed, I think you just made your nickname permanent.”

Daphne glared at her childhood acquaintance, then smirked slightly. Releasing all of that ice had… Well, it and the talk with Harry, the joy of finding someone who understood, had helped clear her mind in a way she had never known before.  That was for you, Tracy. Don’t worry, I won’t lose myself to my ice like you always worried about, not inside where it matters the most.

As the others watched, Daphne raised a clenched fist, then very slowly raised her middle finger as she stared at Blaise, a strange gleam of triumph in her eyes. “Fuck you, you Italian Prima Donna.”

For a moment, everyone stared, then a horrified Hermione sputtered while Angelina broke out into laughter, followed by the Weasley twins. Everyone else followed, even Neville, while Blaise mimed shock. The laughter dispelled any concerns or fears that the others might’ve felt at the roaring of the monster, which had finished the process of waking them all up, including Roger, who was staring bleary-eyed at where the ice began just beyond where his feet had once been sticking out near the end of the cave.

“Wait, you did that without your wand!” Hermione suddenly exclaimed, staring down at where it lay in Daphne’s makeshift bedroll. Her eyes flicked from Harry to Luna and then to Daphne, before her expression firmed. “That means it wasn’t a fluke. Maybe we can all do magic without our wands here.”

“That’s right. I think, I think with magic, with all of us working together, I think we’ll be fine,” Harry said, trying to give a rousing speech, but unable to find the words. But his voice and tone firmed as he went on, counting points off of his fingers, his mind harkening back to what he had been thinking about before, and feeling Daphne’s eyes on him, nearly demanding he keep acting the role his new friends had decided he should rather than retreat into his Dursley mindset.

“There’s a lot of danger here, and I think we all need to sit down and talk about how we’re going to deal with it all. Exposure to the sun when it comes out, the heat. I mean, even in this rain, you can tell it’s hot and humid. Clothing is going to be an issue too if we start moving around a lot. I know the pants and everything I was wearing won’t last long if we move through jungle terrain and so forth. Neville told us about that spell to ward off bugs. We need more like that.  We need to plan, prepare, and practice with our magic.  More than anything, though, we need to remember to work together at all times.  No going off on our own and always share what we come up with.”

“Agreed,” Angelina said, standing up and moving over to one of the trunks. She wasn’t really feeling hungry, but she knew that might be a feeling brought on by the background magic of this place. Magic could sustain them to a certain extent, but it would be a constant drain on their resources, which would be better served in other ways, and their bodies would eventually start to collapse.  At least that’s what Oliver always said… damn… now I’m thinking about him, Katie and Alicia.

Shaking that thought off, having had time in the race through the storm last night to let herself have a good cry, Angelina started to pull out packets of snacks. “Let’s all get some food in us, then we’ll need to set out some goals, plans, and resources. Harry’s right, spells to deal with exposure and heat and everything else like that go first.”

“What about—" one of the Weasley twins began. From here, Harry couldn’t make out their features, as the two of them had taken a position at the back of the cave last night, and right now, their features were in shadow from the magical lights Roger had created.

“That big beastie out there?”

“Will its corpse—”

“draw in further predators, do you think?” The second Weasley said.

“Considering it’s frozen over entirely right now, I rather doubt it. Frozen meat like that doesn’t have much smell to draw in predators. Good grief, even its blood has frozen, Daphne,” Luna observed.

Pushing herself up from where she had hit the stone floor a moment before, Luna danced forward between where Harry and Daphne were standing in the opening of the cave and out into the rain. Awake again, the sheer magic in this place was making it exceedingly hard for Luna to feel anything but delight.

The others just stared as Luna skipped out into the rain, somehow ignoring the deluge that was coming down all around her to stare at the beast in the limited light quizzically. “It’s interesting that it got so close to us without making noise, although I could put that down to the storm,” she said, her voice carrying over that self-same storm back to the others with some difficulty.

She conjured a small light that looked to the kids from the magical world like a small fairy, which bounced and bobbed around Luna’s head as she peered up into the buglike monster’s face. “But that look in its eyes when it spotted us… I wouldn’t say it's sentient, but it was certainly very, very focused. Beyond even that of a normal predator. I wonder if it was using some form of magic to track us? This whole place is so magical, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were species out there that evolved to use magic.”

“Plants will also change to use magic in various ways. That’s how we get magical plants in the first place,” Neville agreed, causing Luna to beam happily over at him as she skipped back into the cave.

Luna didn’t really have anything up top, and her shirt wasn’t sheer, but the sight of her body was still a lot for the young boys around her, as the fabric was completely soaked and sticking to her skin. That and the smile sent his way caused Neville to stutter in turn, but he held out a portion of his blanket for her to wipe herself down with, looking away politely as he did.

Oof, I’m right glad that Luna doesn’t have anything to show at the moment. If I’d done that, in my nightclothes? I’d be giving these boys a bit of a show, Angelina reflected, handing out some snacks to the others. Although, why the hell did I change into my nightclothes anyway? Force of habit, I guess. “Good point, Gred, Forge, but that kind of thing we’ll have to deal with as we run into them. Planning in terms of defensive spells and overall goals now, I think, as well as further organizing our library and everything else we gathered.  It’s not like we’re going to be going anywhere with that rain coming down.”

The others all nodded, with Harry the only one to wave away food, only to twitch as Angelina gave him a glare and forced a packet of Sugar Quills and a chocolate frog on him. “Eat,” she ordered. “You might not think you’re hungry, but you shouldn’t rely on your magic to keep you going all the time.”

More cowed by the rough concern in Angelina’s voice than her glare, Harry nodded before twitching as he looked past her towards the unconscious form of Angelina’s friend. After a second, the others began to do the same thing. That young lady hadn’t stirred since Harry had first seen her, but she did so now, one hand rising to her forehead as they all watched.

“Ugh, did Charlie sneak a dragon in and let it tap dance on me or something?” the black-haired girl groaned, and to Harry’s surprise, her hair flickered to white and blue.

Angelina and Roger moved over to her, kneeling beside her, followed by the twins. “Tonks! You’re finally waking up, huh? Lazy girl,” Angelina laughed with both relief and a teasing edge to your tone. “Honestly, it’s enough to make me wonder how you got that prefect badge.”

“Angie, you might be Alpha Bitch in the lion’s den, but if you take that tone with me again when me whole body feels like someone used me fer bludger practice, I’m gonna---" the older girl’s voice trailed off for a second, as seemingly everything that had gone on with the train crash came back to her. “That wasn’t some really weird dream, was it? The train, everything went… and, and Hestia--”

“Sideways and through dimensions,” Luna supplied cheerfully, bouncing up and down in the middle of the cave, pushing through Tonks’s sudden spike of grief as quickly as she could.  Now was not the time for it “The Portentous Pollywaddles were right as always, although even my father and I didn’t expect the scale of this disaster.”

“… You’re a Lovegood, right? Think I’ve seen you once or twice over at the Burrow,” the girl observed, staring at the younger blonde.

“And you are Nymphadora Tonks. I’ve heard Miss Weasley talk about you a time or two. Don’t worry though, I always prefer to make my own impressions of people,” Luna said, still smiling happily even as she delivered a line that all but Harry could tell meant Miss Weasley didn’t have much good to say about Nymphadora.

“… Good to know,” Tonks said at last, after staring at Luna for a few seconds, before deciding that she really didn’t want to dive too deeply into what Miss Weasley, who hopefully she would never see again, had said about her. Merlin, it wasn’t as if I dumped Charlie. Charlie dumped me to work with dragons! What, did she think I should’ve been doing more to attract him or something? Screw that!

She then glared, her eyes flashing red along with her hair. “And don’t call me that name. Just Tonks if ya know what’s good for you. You get a pass this once, but your Lovegoodness won’t save you from my wrath, got it?”

While Luna nodded, still smiling cheerily, Tonks looked over at Angelina. She could remember stopping in to talk to the young girl, who had, despite only going into her third year, come to run the female side of the Gryffindor Tower, something all the Prefects had learned quickly. Tonks's next memory was a loud screeching noise, a feeling of being airborne, and then…nothing. “So, what’s the prognosis?” she asked before looking around. “And where the bleedin’ heck are we?”

“You took a bad hit to the head, which is no longer bleeding, thankfully. I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but you might have a concussion,” one of the Weasley twins, George, said, for once foregoing their doublespeak as he pulled the makeshift wraps off the older girl’s head.

“Don’t worry though, we’re all safe so you should have time to recover. This cave might not look like much, but in comparison to where we crashed, it’s a small bit of heaven.” Angelina added. “Here, have some chocolate frogs, and we’ll start filling you in on everything.”

She winked over her shoulder at Harry before turning back to Tonks. “Starting with how Harry Potter over there really is as big a hero as some of those storybooks make him out to be,” she teased.

Harry blushed, stammered, and held up his hands as if to protest, but Tonks heard none of it. Instead, she simply stared at her cousin. Oh yeah, this was to be Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, wasn’t it?

Before this, before she had laid eyes on him, that hadn’t really registered. Tonks had not thought of Lily and James’s kid for years. She had been looking forward to being single, partying it up, killing her tests and graduating. Now though, staring at his small, spare frame, she found herself a little off balance, and really guilty that the thought of searching him out hadn’t ever occurred to her.

“Er, Wotcher, Harry. Already leaning into the Gryffindor in your blood, huh?” She tried, causing Harry to blush still more.

Sensing something was up with her older friend, Angelina stuffed a chocolate frog into her mouth, then looked over at the others. “So, who wants to start this tale for our older friend here?”

“Less of the old, Alpha bitch, or I’ll show ya the difference between experience and bravado,” Tonks warned, before groaning and holding her head. “But yeah, lay it on me, all.  Where are we, why we’re here, and… what the heck is with the weird ice sculpture out in the rain…”

As her voice trailed off, the others looked at one another, wondering how to begin. Finally, the twins and Angelina volunteered Roger to start, and the oldest among the boys began reluctantly to explain what had happened.

Through it all, Tonks listened closely, thinking through the throbbing in her head, trying to think about the big issues, solutions, some concerns, and a bit more. The report became a group project, and Tonks still didn’t say anything, partly because of the pain in her head.

Weirdly, Tonks could tell the rest of her body was doing a lot better than it should have.  Given the pain in her head, Tonks knew her neck and shoulder should have been hurting too, but they weren’t.  Heck, a skinned knee she had just gotten stumbling out of the Prefect’s carriage was also gone.

The rest of Tonks’s silence was due to being more than a little overwhelmed at everything that had happened.  The first monster they had faced sounded as dangerous as a troll.  The next set of monsters sounded worse in their own way, like someone had taken wolf-like pack tactics, upped their numbers to more like a herd, and then merged them with bugs of various types and nasty dispositions.

Tonks was a seven-year veteran of Defense Against the Dark Arts and Care of Magical Creatures. She’d never heard of anything like either type of monster. Not historically, not currently.  To say nothing about those mushrooms that throw freaking living spears hard enough to puncture wood! No, Angelina’s right, this is probably another dimension. I might not know much about runes, I dropped it after my third year, but I know the Express uses runes to transfer from one place to another. 

Finally, the group explanation finished, and Tonks was happy to see that everyone had been eating snacks or sorting out the various expanded trunks.  Now, the bushy-haired girl, Hermione, was peering over a few books, a magical light floating nearby.  With the rain coming down heavily outside, such lights were still necessary.  Neville and Blaise were also peering over a few things that looked like potion ingredient packages from where Tonks was laid out. 

Best to address that first, maybe? Tonks thought, looking around at them all, grimacing as another flash of pain went through her as she moved her head a little.  Okay, so however this place is helping our magic heal us, it doesn’t extend to brain trauma.  Probably wouldn’t help with congenital or heart stuff either. Lungs too.  Too complicated.

“Alright, first, Neville, Blaise, I like yer willingness ta get it stuck in and all, very Hufflepuff of ya. But a lot of potion ingredients need to be handled with care. For now, we should all leave that to Fred and George.”

“Who us?” The twins chorused, cocking their heads in unison.

They’d had a good cry to themselves in a corner of the cave last night, and a talk, and, like several of the others, knew there was no way they could find home, let alone return there. Ron’s death still hurt, and would for a while, but George and Fred knew they needed to keep a stiff upper lip in front of the others.  Just like on the Quidditch team, they wanted to make sure everyone stayed upbeat, and to do that, they had to be upbeat themselves.

“Yeah, you two. I know all about some of your pranks, lads, and most of ‘em use potions. So it makes sense ta put you in charge of potions and such like going forward,” Tonks snorted.

At that, Fred and George looked at one another, their expressions twisting to become comical pictures of horror. “What?”

“No!”

“Us?”

“Given actual responsibility?” they whined as one. “How will we live it down?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t call it that,” Angelina snorted, while everyone, even Hermione, laughed. “More like we know you’re good enough at handling potions stuff to not hurt yourself, so why not just leave you to it instead of putting other people in danger? You’re more like meat shields in that case.”

Both twins mock-pouted at her, but the laughter that filled the cave, although ragged in a few cases, did everyone good, and they didn’t argue further.

Tonks let the laughter go on for a second, even watching as Neville backed away from the packets. Blaise didn’t, hovering nearby, looking like he wanted to say something. But with the twins moving in that direction, Tonks turned her attention to other matters. Specifically, making certain no one looked to her for all the answers. “Okay, so, Prefect or not, I ain’t about ta take over or whatever.  You all say Harry took over well enough when there was danger. Fine. But that don’t mean he’s gonna make all the decisions either.”

For some reason, Harry felt his eyes flick towards Daphne, but she was simply looking at Tonks steadily, listening intently and, Harry breathed a sigh of relief.  It wasn’t so much that Tonks thought Harry wasn’t up to it, but that she felt no one person should shoulder the burden.

“Always needing one person to make the call isn’t the way forward here, not me, not Harry.” Especially not me. Ugh, I barely felt up to being a Prefect. “That way, we all are free to share ideas and make decisions together. Harry proved to be the one able to make the calls in a fight, and I’ll wager I’ll do the same, but that doesn’t mean either of us should always be in charge.”

“We were already acting like that anyway. It’s just when things get dangerous that having one leader, or two, Miss ‘I’m gonna be an auror if it kills me’ is a good idea,” Angelina teased.

“I would say that Harry, and maybe Luna, seem to understand how magic works here more than the rest of us, which could give them insight into some of the problems we could face here. He’s the one who talked me into creating the ice spell I used earlier,” Daphne stated, her eyes flicking back to Harry and catching his own before he could look away again. “But I won’t argue about making survival-type choices by committee when we’re not in immediate danger.”

“Er, I’m happy to just be one voice among many, even if I’m louder occasionally, especially when things get dangerous,” Harry opined, as the rain beyond the cave’s entrance seemed to start to ebb away. “For now, I think we need to think about two things: our resources and our long-term plans.”

“Hmm… you and Luna are the ones that figured out how to use a Point Me spell to find this cave, which shouldn’t have been possible. Finding geographic locations like that isn’t something the spell should do.  But it did here, so lets see how adaptable it can be. Do this for me,” Tonks directed. “Point me, Civilization. Keep your idea of what civilization means vague, maybe just a place where a lot of people live.”

“People meaning someone sentient we can communicate with, perhaps?” Hermione said, looking up from where she had pulled out a notebook as well as the books she had been looking over. “It wouldn’t do for us to find the equivalent of merfolk, and not be able to speak to them.”

“Oooh, a good point,” Blaise muttered. “The language barrier’s going to be irritating.”

“Eh, we can figure out a potion to make you curse in a different language, but that’s about it.  There’s no magic I know of that can teach a whole new language,” George muttered.

Harry barely heard him. He and Luna had both looked at one another, then, with a shrug, turned to look out the cave entrance. The rain had definitely lessened up now, being less like aerial bombardment and more like normal heavy rain, although that didn’t matter much as the pair held out their hands, flicking their fingers in the movements needed to cast the Point Me spell.

After a few moments, Luna’s hand fell by her side.  “Hmm… I could almost feel my hand wanting to pull me forward, like I had just spotted a particularly cute kitten, but that was all.”

“I…” Harry fell silent, still powering the spell, not cutting his off after the spell was cast, like his magic was water from a spigot. Rather, he kept the spigot on, letting it flow out.  He could somehow feel that there was something out there, far away, but there. 

As the others, bar Hermione, who kept working with the books, watched, Harry kept at it for several minutes.  Then he blinked and jerked to the side so quickly his outstretched hand nearly hit the left side of the cave. “Um… I think there is some kind of civilization out there. But… it’s a long, long way away.  Like, so far it’d take us weeks, maybe months, to even fly there.”

Brooms were not very fast in comparison to the planes of the modern world back home. They felt fast, and were incredibly maneuverable, but truly lacked in straight-ahead speed.

“Is that a guess or is that a feeling?” Luna asked airily.

“What’s the difference?” Harry, Blaise, and Tonks all said as one, causing everyone to laugh, bar the twins.

That pair shouted, “Oy, that’s our shtick!”

Luna smiled, then explained. “A guess comes from the mind. It is a leap of logic you can explain when called on. A feeling is either the Blibbering Humdingers bringing you thoughts, or your own heart and magic telling you something.”

“Um, my, my heart and magic, I think.  I… It’s not the first time I’ve felt like that here. Magic here is way more reactive, I think is the best word, than back on Earth. When we use spells like that, I don’t know what you’d call them, we might get a lot more information or be… be almost guided in ways we wouldn’t have been back home.”

“Huh… still, that’s good. So we know a direction, and a destination.  This cave’s not going to become our home away from home, so we’re not going to go full Swiss Family Robinson here,” Angelina mused.

“I loved that movie,” Hermione said absentmindedly.  “The way the family banded together, got over their arguments, and all the traps they made were fascinating.”

“That might come in handy here. We’re not going to move along until we’re ready,” Tonks said, beating Harry and Angelina to it by a second, both having opened their mouths to say the same thing.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “That forest is going to be dangerous to even fly over, and, well, if there’s civilization, who’s to say they are friendly? I’m also worried about bird monsters and other flying dangers.

“I think we need to build up our knowledge of this place and how best to use our resources going forward,” Angelina added. Anti-sunburn spells, defense against other kinds of exposure, a lot of other things. Oh, and food. Not just snacks.”

Hermione waved her notebook in the air for a moment. “I’m already working on a list of helpful spells for that kind of thing. Exploration, though, that’s going to be down to us just getting out there and examining things.”

“You already have a list of useful spells?” Blaise asked, looking at Hermione with his brows furrowed. Definitely a shoe-in for Ravenclaw, this one.

“Hah, she’s got at least four lists going here,” Seamus quipped, looking over Hermione’s shoulder until she pushed him away with a pout. He’d been silent for most of the conversation, not having much to share. “She’s got a list of useful names from all of these books, a list of dietary needs, a list of sanitary needs and a list just called ‘Necessary Spells.’”

Hermione huffed indignantly. “I just want to be organized, that’s all.”

“Not at all, Hermione, we’re just astonished at your ability to multi-task,” Tonks said, while the others laughed.  Hermione seemed to flinch as they did for a second before she realized they weren’t laughing at her but rather in good humor because of what she had done. “So, I think we need to start reinforcing this place.  Harry, why don’t ya pick out two others and check out the area around here. I’d do it myself, if I could move without me brain revolting.”

“I’ll go with Harry if Angelina can be trusted to keep any runic experiments to the sandboxes,” Roger volunteered, looking at the third-year girl with narrow eyes.

Angelina grinned unrepentantly at some hidden message there, although all of the other students born in the Wizarding World were nodding in fervent agreement.  Harry and Hermione looked at one another, then shrugged, deciding they’d learn what that was about soon.

“Fred, George, get to looking over the ingredients. Any potions you think we can use now, you can set up to brew somewhere outside. We don’t need to deal with the fumes in here,” Angelina reminded them. “I’d say take Daphne with you too, Harry.”

“Which leaves Luna and you three to help me with the books,” Hermione stated firmly, looking between Blaise, Neville and Seamus.  “Get over here and start reading. I’ve got fifteen spells picked out already, and we need to fill in how to cast them.”

Seamus groaned, but Harry agreed with Tonks’s plan and headed outside, with Daphne and Roger following, a strange eagerness filling him.  I can’t change how we got here, and Daphne’s right. Thinking it is my fault is silly.  But however we got here, we’re here now. And I, strangely, am looking forward to the challenge!

OOOOOOO

Bail Antilles leaned back in his chair, observing the Senate for a time, which was, as was usual, acting the part of a den of children who assumed that volume was more important than actual intelligence. Mind you, it’s not nearly as loud as it could be. There are, what was the last count, three hundred of our fellow Senators out on various diplomatic missions? Mind you, I don’t miss most of that lot, but Senator Bonteri’s absence has seemingly removed some of our good sense, alas.

The last five days had been quite tumultuous both here in the Senate and abroad throughout the Republic. The collapse of the Jedi had created massive waves in how the Republic ran itself, well beyond the actual number of Jedi.

Jedi missions could largely be put into three different categories, and all such missions were considered important by the Republic or the local government that called them in. Those missions were combat, investigative, or diplomatic-oriented, with quite a bit of carryover from one to the next, admittedly. But regardless of the mission, the Jedi collapsing for any length of time was a Very Bad Thing.

There had only been a few dozen reported deaths among the collapsed Jedi directly linked to that collapse, mainly thanks to most of the Jedi having young padawans with them who didn’t collapse for very long or at all to get them out of trouble. However, that had gotten worse in the days after, as that number had rocketed up to more than a hundred and fifty Jedi killed in the line of duty before their padawans could extract them from their investigative duties. Many times, their padawans had also died or, possibly worse, disappeared into the underworld.

Indeed, the Senate was getting reports from some local governments that many of the criminal elements the Jedi were investigating galaxy-wide had started to attack hospitals, searching for patients who had suddenly collapsed around the same time as The Shift. Moreover, the Bounty Hunters guild was now taking open bounties on the Jedi, and the Black Sun and other galaxy-spanning criminal elements had begun to act more openly.

That was on the investigative front, but even though it hurt Bail to think of it, the deaths of the Jedi assigned to such operations were only one aspect of what the Republic was dealing with. The anti-pirate and other direct combat missions were another, but there, few Jedi had been entirely alone on such operations, and those who had been alone had constituted many of the dead in those first few hours. Since then, the deaths from direct combat had stopped quickly. Because of that, the largest issue for the Senate and the Republic as a whole was the lack of Jedi on diplomatic missions.

This has been a severe lesson for us all, he thought, shaking his head as he looked up at where the Chancellor sat, browbeating a group of senators back into their positions rather than simply shutting their hover seats down as he could. The Jedi had begun to handle so, so many diplomatic issues at the behest of the Senate that we were not prepared to step up and take those missions ourselves.

It didn’t help matters that a large segment of the Senate had almost seemed frozen by events, and not just the fact that the Jedi had all collapsed. No, a lot of senators were entirely thrown off by one of their own, the popular Sheev Palpatine, having collapsed similarly to the Jedi along with his aide. The fact that his remaining two aides had quickly disappeared had not been missed either.

That certainly made Palpatine look even more suspicious to many people. And when other senators tried to rise to his defense, they too started to get looked at very closely indeed by Garm and others. Those Senators were still here, and indeed, could not leave.

Oh no, my friends, you’re going nowhere, Bail, the leader of the Internal Activities committee thought, his thoughts a near-croon. No, you are not. I want you all right where you can be watched, thank you. The fact that Palpatine was a Force user is one thing. How many and how varied the Senators who have tried to occasionally demand his ‘release’ from the Jedi Order or have tried to argue that his being a Force user is not important, oh, that has been most interesting.

In all honesty, Bail knew his committee probably wouldn't find much. Palpatine was as clean as most of the Senators were, and his being a Force user wasn’t enough to condemn him on its own. But it was enough to bring enhanced awareness down on him and anyone who spoke for him. Of which there have been many who were not open friends with Sheev, and many who were not politically aligned with Palpatine and the Centrists.

Thus, the Senate had floundered for several days when faced with the rash of diplomatic demands. But while the Senate floundered, like a many-handed monster, powerful but slow to act on input from the many minds that controlled those hands, it had fallen to individual senators and even their home planets to start picking up the pieces on the hundreds of diplomatic fronts, going around the Senate rather than working with it.

In that, Antilles had never been prouder to be from Alderaan. His king and queen had put forth their own diplomatic missions, acting with a clarity of vision and understanding that many in the Senate seemed to lack. Nor had they been alone in that. Raxus, Alsakan, Malastare, Serenno, Corellia and a dozen other planets had stepped up, doing what they could to continue the work of making certain the Republic kept running.

Indeed, this whole crisis had brought Alderaan closer to one such: Dac, the home of the Mon Calamari species. There was now talk about new trade and economic agreements between the two star systems, despite how distant they were from one another. As for Corellia, Garm had just been telling Bail that the dockyards there were competing for a new contract: a new type of fast courier ship for diplomatic missions.

Leave it to the Corellians to want to design a brand-new type of ship in the wake of a political disaster, Bail thought wryly now, shaking his head, before one of the empty pods in the Senate Hall was filled by young Aayla Secura stepping out into it from the entryway beyond.

Bail wasn’t quite certain how she had come to be the leader of the younglings who had taken command of the Jedi order in this time of crisis. He was certain that Garm had something to do with it, judging by the way he grinned cheerily at the sight of the young blue-skinned Twi’lek and began to rap a few fingers on the protective edge of his bubble. He looks like he’s waiting for a show. Why? Wait…

Corellia, Antilles remembered suddenly, had its own homegrown Jedi. The Green Temple or something? He wondered how they had been dealing with this crisis, and whether, like here on the capital, people were pushing to change the nature of their relationship with the local powers-that-be. Come to think of it, what is that relationship?

That, the idea that there needed to be a change to how the Jedi Order and the Senate connected, had been a popular reaction. That the Senate could take this opportunity to put the Jedi under more senatorial control, to work more like an arm of the Senate than they already were. Thankfully, others, like Bail himself, had argued that they were in this position because they had relied too heavily on the Jedi in various ways, and it was the Senate who needed to be broken away from the Jedi, and perhaps vice versa.

Chancellor Valorum finally got all of the senators to quiet down like so many recalcitrant children and return to their places, with the last two, a member of the Trade Federation and a new senator for the Da’Astan Sector, being the most reluctant to give way to the Chancellor’s authority, having been butting heads on something or other.

Through it all, Aayla had simply stood there, her hands clasped at the small of her back as she stared out across the Senate floor, poised and controlled in a way that she hadn’t been the last time that Bail had seen her, when he had gone over to the temple to see for himself what was going on there with Bail and the others. That had been two days ago, but whatever had been going on in the past two days, it had seemingly allowed young Aayla to find her center once more. She stood poised, unflinching under the eyes of thousands of Senators, all of whom were older but, Bail knew, no wiser in far too many cases.

“Jedi Secura, thank you for agreeing to speak to us. You are here to answer questions from the Senate about the Order and its various duties to the Republic. But before we get to our own questions, do you have any new reports for us about Master Yoda and the other leaders of your order?” The Chancellor asked.

Valorum had somewhat been too slow to move to make friends among the younglings who were now the voices of the Order, but he tried to seem as if he cared now as he addressed her, keeping his tone open and friendly as he tried to appeal to her ego by calling her a Jedi. His attempt fell flat, though, judging by the scowl on Aayla’s face, and he hastened to try and recover. “Ahem, yes, well, how are my friends, Yoda and Windu?”

Even that feels forced, Bail thought. Valorum’s too much the bureaucrat and politician to come off as genuine like Bonteri and Garm did right after The Shift.

“There has been no change in the health of Grand Master Yoda or Master of the Order, Master Windu, Chancellor. That is to say, they still remain unconscious, their minds only slowly taking in the changes within the Force,” Aayla answered promptly. “Several other young knights, however, have begun to awaken elsewhere in the Republic, along with significant numbers of older padawans here in the Temple. I am also happy to report that the last Jedi out on missions for the Order and the people of the Republic have been accounted for.”

Interesting wording, Bail mused, his own political antenna suddenly standing upright. Someone has been coaching young Aayla, someone with certain views on who the Jedi serve. Praise the Force!

“Among the last hundred and ten Jedi and padawan pairs who have checked in with the Order since the last time I was here to announce our progress, there have been two deaths. According to his padawan, Master C’baoth died in a hover car crash. Master Sia has also passed into the Force in a firefight on the planet of Druckenwell. Her Padawan, Vola, survived and has gotten off-planet.”

Despite talking about the death of two of her elders, Aayla still seemed to be poised and in control, and indeed she was. Aayla had never even known the two who had passed, and indeed, hadn’t known any of the Jedi who had died since The Shift or during it. That made the deaths much easier to deal with, unlike how her own Master, Quinlan Vos, was still unconscious.

There was also some confusion as to what Master C’baoth had been up to. C’baoth hadn’t actually been supposed to be on the planet he was reportedly dead on at all. According to the others who knew more about the rumor mill among the Order, such as it was, C’baoth was somewhat infamous within the Jedi Order.  He had historically made a point of going his own way, and had declared himself a Jedi Master rather than the High Council raising him to that station. This was highly unusual. He’d had many admirers, but few friends among the Order.

Aayla also felt composed and in control because the temple had heard from Master Tholme, Master Vos’s own former teacher. He had started to recover earlier that day, although he was in no position to get back to the capital just yet, as he was embedded deeply in an investigation. He had gotten very lucky in being in a safe place to collapse when The Shift hit, but that was a big difference from getting off planet. Even better, though, was that he wasn’t the only one. Knight Fisto and a dozen others had started to recover elsewhere, along with Master Giiett, on a mission to Onderon, and Master Saa in the Gaulus Sector.

All that was a good sign, and Aayla hoped that her own master would start to recover soon as well, even if there didn’t seem to be any kind of rhyme or reason to who recovered faster. A few of the youngsters had posited that some flexibility of thought was needed to help the unconscious Jedi deal with the changes in the Force, how different it now felt, the vibe and energetic nature of it, before they could wake up.

Which is funny to think of, because you would’ve thought that master Yoda was really flexible mentally, but apparently not, Aayla thought even as she listed aloud for the Senate a few other Jedi who had checked in and were making their way back to Coruscant. She even fielded a few questions, having prepared for this, while her mind went elsewhere. Perhaps Master Yoda is only flexible in certain ways, then? Although thinking that seems… disloyal? Something like that. Like it is almost wrong to think that Master Yoda isn’t up to the challenge. Hmm…

She did not mention Tholme, Giiett and Saa, the most senior of the Masters who had begun to recover. They had all been very clear on the fact that they didn’t want the Senate to know they were coming, or that they were bringing friends. Why Master Tholme had mentioned that to Aayla, she had no idea, but she was willing to keep it a secret along with everything else, even if she wondered how they had somehow planned between them that same response.

“It’s good to hear that more Jedi are recovering, but that leads me to two other questions: First, what about the good Senator from Naboo and his aide?” Valorum inquired, his emotions a mixture of vindictive pleasure and, for some reason, personal delight to Aayla’s empathic powers. “Have they shown signs of awakening?”

“No, Chancellor. We’re still keeping them in the penitent cells, and we have fed both Miss Moore and Senator Palpatine intravenously over the past few days to keep them healthy, but neither of them have so much as twitched so far,” Aayla answered easily. There are a lot of questions about those two, but in terms of my own priorities, they barely register.

“And with Jedi Knights and older padawans starting to awaken, how soon will you be able to resume your duties? I believe I speak for my fellows that we have been forced to realize how much we had leaned on the Jedi on the diplomatic front, and it was a harsh wake-up call that we do not wish to repeat. But even if we continue to do so, that still leaves investigative and combat-related missions.” The Chancellor shook his head, his face shifting into a wry look.

A look which Aayla could tell was fake. Valorum didn’t see Aayla or the other padawans as young people. Aayla could not sense any kind of empathy from the man, even as he said, “It hurts my pride as a man in a way I haven’t felt since I was a young buck just getting out of college to ask this of a young girl such as yourself. Yet the Force does give you all a bit of a leg up on any other investigators or even unit of fighters we have access to.”

There were some grumblings about that, which Aayla let pass by before replying. “I am afraid, Chancellor, that any questions about resuming missions for the people of the Republic will have to wait. While I will be the first to tell you that many of the older padawans who have woken up here on Coruscant in the past five days would willingly go on missions of that sort, not all of them are suited for it. I can compile a list of around a hundred and fifty here in the Temple, and I can speak with a further three hundred elsewhere throughout the galaxy that could be willing to resume missions, most of whom are older padawans who would be willing to act without their master’s guidance for a time.”

She held up a hand, waving it back and forth for emphasis. “However, most of those are Consulars, not Guardians or Sentinels. With access to the Jedi archive’s notes on their various lightsaber styles and abilities, I would be leery of sending most of those padawans into combat. I could perhaps compile a list of a hundred names from that list that I would trust on combat missions, but that is all.”

That brought an even larger reaction from the Senate, and many of the Senators shouted at her, demanding that all the Jedi who could be sent on such missions be sent. Others bellowed that the padawans should resume their diplomatic missions at the same time, only to be shouted at in turn. Only a handful of Senators tried to point out that the padawans were not fully trained Jedi, and couldn’t be expected to be as effective, but even there, most of the Senators weren’t looking at that from the perspective of sending young people into situations they could not handle. Rather, most simply didn’t think the padawans could complete the missions successfully.

Aayla waited them out, girding herself with her training and the knowledge of her orders, the conversation she’d had with Master Tholme. Again, Master Tholme and Giiett’s orders had been plain: no Jedi was to be sent into danger until someone more senior could vet their skills. And with the Senate actually doing much of its own legwork for once, as well as Alderaan and other planets stepping up to provide neutral intermediaries, there aren’t many non-dangerous missions to pick from.

The Chancellor slowly regained control of the Senate, then elected a few Senators to speak one after another. The first was Senator Garm from Corellia, and he sent his floater forward, his normally debonair face set into a frown.

This did not match his emotions, which were almost jubilant to Aayla’s empathic ability, but Aayla gave him the benefit of the doubt.  He had been acting as an ally of the order since all this began at his welcoming party.

“This actually highlights a problem that the good Chancellor mentioned a few moments ago. That the Senate itself had begun to lean heavily on the Jedi to be our voices, to handle diplomatic missions which the Senate itself should have. Could you tell me which came first in this instance, the chicken or the egg?”

The almost teasing way he said this brought smiles to many of the Senators, and some of their consternation faded, while Aayla simply shrugged, trying hard to keep a bout of giggles from escaping. Why do I get the impression Senator Iblis is pushing his own agenda here, but also that I should just go along with it?

While that feeling was somewhat faint, it was enough for Aayla, and she answered honestly. “I’ve been looking through the archives, and there was a time when the three branches were balanced within the Jedi Order. However, that began to end around three hundred years ago, as more Jedi became Consulars because the galaxy was so peaceful back then. This continued until around seventy years ago, when young Jedi's preference for that sect over the other two grew tremendously. With that in mind, I feel like that was in response to the sheer number of diplomatic missions we were being sent on.”

“Yet now, crime and piracy are both on the rise throughout the Republic. The Green Jedi of my home system have not become our diplomats. They have become our investigators. Our hunters, to be sent after dangerous pirate bands, criminals, and murderers,” Garm said, addressing the Senate as a whole rather than Aayla. “I think, Senators, we should continue what we have been doing over the past five days: taking more of the diplomatic missions into the Senate’s own hands. Even when the Jedi Order recovers fully.”

This sparked a debate, but Aayla took no part, stepping back and observing as she reined in her empathic abilities. With this many people around, if she lost control, the crowd's emotions could overwhelm her. With no one speaking directly at her, she had no single person to anchor her empathic skills on.

Good grief, I knew Master Vos said the Senate resembled a creche arguing about whose turn it is to play with the toys, but this is just silly! I wonder what the common folk out there would think if they saw their leaders just shouting and yelling at one another like this?

Ten minutes later, though, Aayla did click the button indicating she had something to say when a few of the senators started to shout that the Senate should be in charge of the Jedi Order’s curriculum since it seemed they had not been able to handle it themselves. That the Order should come under direct control from the Senate.

“I would like to address the point that Senator Ask Aak raised, as well as the one put forth from the senator of Fedalle. “You use the term ‘temporary measure’ sir, and while I am no great historian, I have studied governments and laws on several planets, and I know for a fact that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary measure. Furthermore, Senator Aak, you mentioned taking control of the Order's curriculum. How would you even know what is most important for Force users to learn?”

While Aak opened his mouth, Aayla continued on, determined to make her say heard. Master Tholme is kind of scary. How did he know we’d hear demands on this score? Even if he didn’t walk me through how to answer, Stavos helped me enough that I can do so easily.

“The Senate only sees the finished product, or, today, a very unfinished product in myself. How many among you have thought of how much training, effort and tears go into becoming a jedi, about the pitfalls we all have to deal with from a young age?”

She waited a second, letting her eyes sweep the Senate, keeping her empathy powers under firm control.

“You have no idea about the training that younglings need undertake to keep their thoughts to themselves, to reach out solely to the Force and not be influenced by one another’s thoughts. You have no idea how we are trained to follow our instincts through the Force, or how to teach someone to use the Force in general. You have no idea about the pitfalls, about the Dark Side or why Jedi need to always have a certain amount of control and how we teach that. You would teach our younglings as if they were typical children, but they are not. Without the Force, you would not even be able to access the lessons written down for such in the library, let alone make use of them.”

Aayla gestured to herself, letting a brief grin cross her features, feeling the Force around her, a mix of a warm blanket and a young akk dog, eager to obey commands and play.

“The Force helps us learn at advanced rates, retain at advanced rates. You all initially saw me and those of us who have stepped forward to command this chaos as inexperienced children, and we did need help then. But I hope that we have proven over the past few days that there is far more to us than that. We are not quite adults, and I’ll be the first to admit I am not ready to take my knighthood trials. But you don’t even know what those are; you don't know the difference between a Master and a Knight, or a Knight and a padawan, save for who is in charge and age. There are vast differences, and there always will be.”

Again, Aayla let those words sink in, then gently made her hover bubble, something she’d found rather ridiculous when it was described to her, shift forward, allowing the pickups to all see her at once as she turned, staring around the Senate Chamber. Now to make the point that Tholme nearly demanded I pass on. I could wish Stavos was here, or Shodarr, but Master Tholme’s existing connection to me made me the natural choice to deliver the message he wanted us to. Even if I’m only thirteen, drat it all!

“Furthermore. We Jedi do not take orders solely from this body. We like to work with local governments, and even the Senate, yes. But we are such good investigators and problem solvers because we are able to connect to the Force. We are a neutral party, and a trusted one the galaxy wide, because we answer to the Force, and through it, our steps are directed. We Jedi must always be free to follow the Force, because without it, we are nothing. Through the Force, we serve the Republic’s people, not just the governments that control them.”

This somewhat fiery response, because Aayla herself believed that, and had felt it even stronger over the past few days, drew many a heated shout from the Senate. But there were just as many yells of approval, while Garm began a slow clap, soon joined by dozens of other senators, then hundreds. It wasn’t enough to drown out the shouting and vitriol, but it was enough to mute it, and Aayla returned her hover bubble back to its former position. When it clicked into place, she stepped fully back into the shadows, opened the door behind her, and exited, leaving the Senate to its own devices.

Aayla had said the things the Masters wanted her to say and answered the questions she had been called to answer. Anything more was beyond her purview and their prior planning.

If they had sprung even one question on me that I didn’t know the answer to, I think my self-control would’ve unraveled, the young Rutian Twi’lek thought ruefully, leaning against the hallway outside the Senate Hall, breathing in deeply. She remained there for several moments, then centered in the Force, heading out of the giant Senate building, walking towards the temple.

She nodded to the senatorial guards on duty on this side of the bridge, then to the two Jedi on duty on the other side, noting with relief that they were both real Temple Guards, clad in that sect’s traditional body armor and helmet. They nodded back, wry amusement and a surprising amount of respect radiating off both of them despite their tight control. I could wish they were willing to take over some leadership roles, but given everything that’s happened, I can’t deny the need for a full guard force on duty at all times, drat it!

Several extremely enterprising members of the underworld had attempted to attack the Jedi Temple over the past few days in the Order’s moment of weakness. Thankfully, due to the effots of the Senate’s guards and Padawan Hrimiyarr, the first effort had been repulsed. The second, more serious attempt involved some off-world forces, but by then several Temple Guards had recovered, and they slaughtered the attackers without much trouble.

Those crime lords are definitely painting big, big targets on their backs once the Jedi order gets its feet completely under it again. Going after Black Sun is going to be a mission I’ll treasure if it’s assigned to master Vos and me, she thought, gleefully looking forward to it, and not just because of the amount of good taking out that giant criminal syndicate would do for the galaxy as a whole. It will be very, very good to just go back to being a regular padawan again. My self-control and nerves can’t take much more of this!

Inside the praxeum, a youngling on the cusp of the age where they would be chosen as a padawan waited. Those in his age group helped with the daily running of the temple, looked after those younger than themselves, and acted as messengers. She had heard the term gofers before, and it certainly fit these younger intiates. Not mind you that these gofers are all that much younger than me. Although… I find it quite hilarious how none of the teachers or minders have woken up yet.

With that, she smiled cheerily at the younger boy, giggling internally at the blush that suffused his features. “I’m back. The meeting with the Senate went as expected, and I laid down the law a little. Master Tholme and the others were right, and I’ll be sending messages to that effect later. But if you could tell the Padawan Council that I’m going to stop in for a bite to eat before meeting with them, that would be helpful.”

The youngling nodded and raced ahead of her, while she shifted her direction towards the commissary. She was not altogether surprised when, halfway through her meal, she was joined by the rest of the so-called Padawan Council. It was a silly name, admittedly, but all of them had thought it important to name it like that, to have some measure of continuity to how the Order would organize itself in more normal times. And as for them coming down to eat with me, well, we’re all young. With young appetites and young metabolisms, she thought, cheerfully continuing to eat even as she waved one hand at her fellows.

One after another, the group of padawans who had stepped forward to lead the temple after The Shift occurred slid into place. None of them have been replaced just yet, but all of them were eagerly looking forward to that moment. Still, until Master Tholme, Giiett and the others arrived, they were still in charge.

Aayla had only known a few of them before The Shift occurred but had gotten to know them all very well over the past few days. Indeed, she would even say they were friends.

The Wookie Hrimiyarr was a rock of good sense, keeping his thoughts on the daily running of the Order, with the protection of the temple in particular being his charge until the first Temple Guards began to revive. Since then, he’d kept communicating with them and continued to oversee daily maintenance and care of the Temple’s gardens with a small team of helpers.

Although not nearly as many helpers as lessons for the younglings and seeing to the toddlers and babies called for, whose organization fell on Urno Moga. A young human from Chandrila, barely a few years older than Aayla, he had already chosen to become a teacher, with a caring, giving personality that had… well, Aayla had found herself looking at him with some seriously un-Jedi-like thoughts over the last few days. The least of which was that he’d make someone a fantastic househusband, something she’d giggled about with a few of the other girls.

Another young human, Stavos, who had no real interest in anything but books and reading, had become the aide to everyone else and the one most at home in the archives. I doubt his abilities with those archives will save him from a tongue-lashing from Master Nu, though. Unless Master Yaddle revives first, she’ll protect him.

The Miralukan Shodarr handled the temple's daily communications, along with a score of dedicated helpers. She was the only one Aayla would have called a friend before this; they were both from Clan Womprat, and the two young girls exchanged smiles now.

The Council was rounded out by the young Miralian named Barris Offee.

Well, I call her young, but she’s barely three years younger than I am, Aayla thought ruefully. We’re all too young for this, but we’ve all had to deal with it. And thankfully, we’ve had the Force to help us with it. She’s part of this Padawan Council for a reason; remember that.

That reason being that Barriss had shown a marked ability to use the Force to heal almost as soon as she could walk. And right now Barriss, despite being the only one on the council who was still a youngling, was the closest thing they had to a Jedi Healer to look after the thousands of unconscious Jedi that filled the temple. To say that was a daunting task was an understatement, but with a judicious use of help offered by the Senate and putting several hundred padawans and her fellow younglings to work, Barris managed it.

Still, I hope that some of the healers start reviving soon. I can tell it’s wearing on her.

As they all set to work on their food, the two human pre-teens exchanged jokes about what one or the other had gotten for food, and Aayla filled them in on the Senate meeting. Which thankfully didn’t take very long.

 “In a way, it’s good they’re pushing for the Order to resume our normal functions. There are a lot of missions out there we need to start moving on, and a few that I think we would be better served stepping away from the Senate for. Even if the Senate was the one that gave us the initial order,” Shodarr said, frowning thoughtfully.

She reached up and tugged at her long braid for a moment, its stark white contrasting sharply with her light reddish skin. “Especially the mission of that last group that came in yesterday, that group of fifty Jedi that was originally supposed to be sent to the planet Kalee under Master D'oon, I think? I looked over the details of that mission with Stavos’s help and those of the padawans on it, and I’m still uncertain why a verdict was already reached as to which side of the conflict the Republic would back in the peace talks.”

“I agree. Master D’oon’s a Guardian, one who’s taken nearly all his missions from the Senate rather than using the Force to direct his movement. I looked him up and I… well…” Stavos shrugged. “He’s taken a lot of diplomatic missions that turn violent at some point, and… he seems to be just, well, always siding with the Senate?”

The implications of that were unpleasant, but they all nodded as he continued. “Based on that, and the sheer lack of investigative-type missions he’s been on, I wouldn’t call Master D’oon very good as a diplomat or investigator. The rest of that group didn’t make up for that lack.” Stavos shrugged with a smirk. “There’s a reason not even one of those padawans is here with us right now.”

“Is the Force saying anything specific?”

“I’m getting the impression that going into that mission we need to keep our eyes open, and our minds wide,” Shodarr said, smiling cheerily at the laughs this got from her fellows. For a Miralukan like her, those two things were synonymous. Their race had evolved away from having eyes thousands of years ago, developing their affinity to the Force to the point where they used it to replace their eyes entirely. “Beyond that, nothing specific. A certain feeling of danger maybe, but I’m no Master. If I can get that out of the Force then surely Master D’oon--”

“Remember that the Force is lighter,” Hrimiyarr reminded them all, his voice a low growl that all of them easily translated thanks to the Force. “We have all felt it, the feeling of darkness banished in The Shift. How easily the Force comes to our hands in comparison to before. The Shift might not have been intended to do that, but the Force is certainly far, far easier to commune with than I have ever felt in all my years. D’oon might have been able to feel what we can about this mission.”

Wookies were actually one of the longer-lived races in the galaxy. They could live as long as four hundred years or more, although Hrimiyarr wasn’t actually older than the rest of them mentally because his people didn’t mature quite as quickly as other races. Thus he’d been forced to shift from one Clan of learners to another twice, but as he was not the first Wookie the Order had seen by far, it had been dealt with easily.

Still his point was well taken, and all of them exchanged brief grins for a moment, fingers tapping on the table, rattling dishes, as and a few of them even snickered and began to lift their place up off of the table with the Force, little things like that that they would never do around their elders, and indeed would’ve found hard to concentrate on while also maintaining a conversation and eating. However, now, doing so didn’t take nearly as much concentration, and the Force flowed through them more easily, like water after sludge had been removed.

Still, Hrimiyarr’s point was well taken. The Force might be telling Shodarr that this mission was important, but there was no telling if Master D’oon or any of the Jedi with him had felt the same thing.

“Stavos, research that mission a little bit, please. If it’s important, we should have a plan of action ready to submit to Master Giiett when he returns.” Micah Giiett was the only one of the three known Masters to have recovered who was on the Council, and he would lead the temple until more Council members woke up.

“I already have,” Stavos said, his voice just a tad smug. “The mission was indeed one that could lead to violence, hence why a group of fifty Jedi was being sent. The Senator for Skagos demanded a full intervention in a war between the Yam’rii and the Kaleesh. Ostensibly, the Kaleesh, a near-reptilian species, have become belligerent expansionists and have wiped out whole Yam’rii colonies, and the Yam’rii have tried to end the war through diplomatic means.”

He shook his head. “However, all the sources the group under Master D’oon had on the war came from the Yam’rii. Nowhere do those sources explain that the Yam’rii colonized Kalee first, or who actually started the war. Further, in the archives, the Yam’rii are described as having violent tempers and being natural predators, whose young reach full age within a few months. They are also a warlikespecies, one capable of fighting its own battles. We’re not getting the other side of this story at all.”

“That’s a familiar refrain,” Urno groaned, running his hand through his hair for a moment. “How many missions have you been looking into where that was the case since we started to reorganize after the Shift? I know it’s not my place, and when the Masters and Knights start waking up more, I know it will go back to normal, but I think we seriously have to remember that the Senate might have its own reasons to tell us things, and few of those reasons will be straightforward, let alone lawful or right.”

“Agreed. As for this mission, since it involves ongoing violence on a planetary scale, I think we need to look at it now. We can’t wait for the elders to wake up,” Shodarr said, not letting even a hint of concern enter her voice as she reached out to gently pat Barriss’s thigh under the table, a wordless show of encouragement the youngster needed given how badly she flinched at the mention of the elders under her care. “It might only be a matter of time before more Masters wake up, but that could mean thousands of Kalee and Yam’rii dying.”

“Who to send on that mission is a question. There aren’t a lot of us who are awake that can take on a mission that is diplomatic, investigative and combat-related in scope,” Aayla said ruefully. “Before this disaster, I hadn’t handled anything diplomacy related with my master. Investigative, sure. Master Vos and I went on several missions of that kind, and most of them did involve some measure of balance. But diplomacy? Even with a whole day of lead time, I felt like I was coming apart at the seams in front of the Senate several times.”

“How many other missions involve ongoing conflicts?” Hrimiyarr asked. Among them, he was the one who was most likely to be sent on a mission that would involve conflict. Not only did he have natural advantages as a Wookie, but he had determined that he would become a guardian quite quickly after becoming padawan.

 The only problem was his Master was still comatose, so he would need to either have other padawans along or go on a mission alone.

Stavos quickly pulled up a data slate, letting it hover in the air for a moment, then flicking it around the table so each interested person could read and touch it. “See if the Force tells you anything about these,” he said, once more showing why he had become so invaluable to the others.

There were seventeen ongoing missions that involved what the locals would term large-scale violence. Six were ongoing turf wars between different gangs, which the locals just wanted to shut down entirely, on Core World ecumenopoli. On those planets, gangs could call on literal armies of criminals, and thus the locals couldn’t deal with them, to say nothing of corruption within their own ranks.

There were several ongoing issues with the Harch, an expansionist race that looked somewhat like spiders, with several of the neighbors. These involved actual, if small, fleet actions. The rest were anti-pirate missions, with one anti-corporation mission that would be as much investigative as combat-related.

“The High Council determined the Kalee/Yam’rii conflict needed fifty Jedi. I think we need to at least double it if we’re not sending any actual Knights or masters. If we can get some of the Temple Guard to go, that would be better,” Hrimiyarr mused. “As for the rest…” Closing his eyes and very visibly reaching out for the Force, the others waited patiently before he shook his head, indicating that none of them resonated with as much urgency as that one to him.

After a few moments, the others all did the same. Although none of them had a great mastery of reaching into the future like this, or indeed much experience in doing so, they had been taught how to do it. With the Force the way it was now, this meant they got back just as much information as older Masters might have. After a few seconds, nods went around the table, as none of the other missions seemed as important as the one to Kalee. “Do you think we can put it off until Master Giiett and Master Saa arrive?”

Master Saa had said she could get to Coruscant in six days the day before. Master Giiett said he would arrive at around the same time, so they were working on the same assumption for both.

They all looked at one another, but on this point, the Force was silent, and before any of them could suggest alternate ways to perhaps probe the Force for that answer, a voice hailed them from the entrance into the cafeteria. “Hello there! I understand that you all are in charge here? If that is not a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is. Of course, given everything that’s happened, perhaps that hits a bit too close to home.”

Aayla turned and breathed a sigh of relief, seeing a semi-familiar face. Obi-Wan Kenobi was an older padawan and a friend of her master. They weren’t the same age, as Obi-Wan was a little younger than her master, although he often said he was the more mature of the two. He continued saying it even after Vos was elevated to knighthood before Obi-Wan, and their friendship had continued despite that.

“Well, if you’re volunteering, Obi-Wan,” Aayla said with a smile as she stood up to greet him. “I will happily hand over everything to you.”

“Those are not words that I wish to hear when I walk into the temple,” Obi-Wan murmured before shrugging. “I was knocked out too, but thankfully, neither Master Jinn nor I were in any danger. We had just arrived at our destination and had yet to go down to the planet. He hasn’t woken up, but I think he will soon. I don’t think it is just a youth problem, or else I wouldn’t be surprised to see my old friend Quinlan up on his feet soon. I think it’s a flexibility issue. And while my master is decidedly inflexible in some ways, his view of the Force is not one of them.”

“You have no idea how much I can only hope that is the case,” Aayla murmured, before introducing Obi-Wan to the others. He was somewhat known to Hrimiyarr and Shodarr, but the others hadn’t ever met him before, although the smiles on everyone’s face meant his humor, always somewhat understated but there with Obi-Wan, had hit home already.

It took several hours for Obi-Wan to be brought up to speed as the group sat and talked there in the cafeteria, with other younglings and padawans coming and going. Many of those greeted Aayla and the rest, who waved at them, and Obi-Wan even drew some smiles as well, which he responded to.

After they all had finished catching him up on what had been going on within the temple and on  Coruscant, Obi-Wan leaned back thoughtfully, dabbing at his lips with a napkin, before setting it down.

“I have nothing to add to anything that you’ve been doing in the temple itself or with the Senate. I might not have taken that hard a line with them in this latest meeting, Aayla, but since Master Tholme walked you through what to expect via Hypercom, I’m not going to gainsay him there; even if I sense some of your own feelings in the matter.” Aayla shrugged unrepentantly at that, and Obi-Wan continued. “Do you have any idea what they’re up to?”

Aayla waved to Stavos, and the Archive specialist answered quickly. “Master Saa is the Watchman for the Gaulus Sector, and I believe she was leading an investigation into the disappearance of one of the Lost Thirteen. As for Master Tholme, I have no idea.”

He bounced the discussion back over to Aayla, who did have an idea. Master Tholme was Master Vos’s former teacher, and he was a Jedi Shadow, one of the Jedi who specialized not only in clandestine activities, but in hunting down anything to deal with the Dark Side. Since the New Sith Wars, the call for that sect had lessened over time in gentle, almost imperceptible increments, but there were still a handful of Shadows within the Order. They tended to be secretive even on normal missions, acting solely as Sentinels for the most part, but they acted more often than not off the grid from the rest of the Order.

She shook her head, and Obi-Wan nodded thoughtfully. As a good friend of Quinlan, despite their slightly different ages, he well knew what his friend’s Master was, and didn’t question it.

“Beyond that, there being two unknown Force users within the Senate feels extremely suspicious. Worse that they were so closely connected. I can’t say I agree with the decision to put the pair behind bars, but I can’t say I disagree with it either. Did you search them?”

“We did. Nothing incriminating. No lightsabers or anything like that,” Hrimiyarr snorted. ”If they’d had red lightsabers, that would’ve made the whole thing a lot less mysterious, wouldn’t it?”

That won a nervous laugh from anyone but Obi-Wan, whose eyes went far away for a moment. He’d had some experience with Fallen Jedi, not that he was going to share that at this point. Yet the fact the memory of those times came to him now felt significant.

He shook his head for now, though. “Has anyone thought about reaching out to the Agricorps and their various outposts out there? They are Force users too.”

Aayla’s wide eyes were his first answer, and then Shodarr cursed. “They wouldn’t have been given any kind of recall order, and there might be a lot of trouble there! KRIFF! Farming and such like isn’t the type of job you can just fall unconscious during and assume nothing’s going to happen!”

Obi-Wan had a few other suggestions and questions, and Aayla smiled a bit inside even as several runners ran off to call the various Agricorps worlds. Obi-Wan might not be willing to take the lead, but once someone else was doing so, he was more than willing to become an advisor, and his suggestions were all pretty good.

When he was done giving bits of advice, Obi-Wan solemnly asked Stavos for the list of missions. Then, his eyes closed as the others had; he let his fingers rest on the scroll screen for a few moments before blinking and shaking his head quickly. “Well now, that was interesting. I’m still getting used to how much more reactive the Force is these days, but that was definitely a nudge in my direction. The Force does want me in particular to go on this peacekeeping mission on Kalee.”

“Knight Shaak Ti is due back in four days or so, depending on if she has to finish her current mission or not,” Stavos said, looking around at the others. “Perhaps we can wait until she arrives and put her in charge? With her and, hopefully, a few Knights who may revive before then, you should have enough of a physical strike force at least. Obi-Wan and others can bring more investigative-type help to the table, as well as diplomacy.”

After a few moments, they all nodded. While not all of them were well acquainted with Knight Ti, what they knew of her was helpful. A Togrutan, Shaak Ti was a newly made Knight, around six years older than Obi-Wan, who was the oldest there. She had also been one of the first Knights to wake up after The Shift occurred.

Unfortunately, she had also been one of the ones who had been badly injured when she went unconscious, having actually been in a running gun battle alongside several local constables against a group of drug runners. She’d taken several plasma bolts before she was pulled into cover, and, on top of being unconscious from the Force’s Shift, she’d needed to spend time in a bacta tank. While she had wakened since and could communicate via a radio in her mask, she was still in said bacta tank now.

Aayla knew Shaak Ti personally. There’d been a few times when she had come in to speak to the younglings, specifically to those having issues with body image and self-worth. Aayla had been one of them, and she'd also dealt with some of the emotions she had felt from Non-Jedi toward her.

Shaak was calm, collected and solitary, which was surprising given her species; Togrutans were normally very communal and pack-oriented, even now. She was also extremely good with a lightsaber and a good diplomat. She was perfect for a mission like this, and everyone there nodded.

“In that case, I am going to go check on my master and meditate for a bit. If any of you need any help, I am here but, I don’t want to rock the boat or anything as you all seem to have everything under control,” Obi-Wan said.

Everyone there nodded, while Aayla gave Obi-Wan a grin and a thumbs-up. “We just have to keep this going for a less than a week, then Master Giiett and Master Saa at least will be here to take it all off our shoulders.”

Obi-Wan suddenly smirked, reminding many of them that there had been a time when he was a youngling who had, according to rumor, gotten trouble for , among other things, sneaking out of the temple into the lower districts of Coruscant. “Are you so certain they will want to? You’ve been doing such a good job after all, and it wouldn’t be very Jedi-like to remove someone simply because of their age if they have indeed been doing a good job.”

The look of horror on everyone else’s faces at that had Obi-Wan laughing even as he walked away.

Obi-Wan’s smile slid from his face as he walked out of the cafeteria. His destination was the penitent cells. There, he paused, frowning a bit as he realized there were no guards on duty. Something that would need to be corrected. The others haven’t had any dealings with Fallen Jedi. I have, he mused. There’s no telling when Sly Moore and Senator Palpatine will wake up, or what kind of mentality they will have either.

Reaching for the Force, Obi-Wan’s frown deepened a little. It was still roiling and twisting, changing fundamentally still, days after The Shift. Yet at the same time, it came when he called to it easily, allowing his senses to flow over the two prisoners.

Whereupon his mind almost instantly recoiled. It was as if something inside the pair was completely anathema to him. Or, or they are so self-contained and trained they have subconscious shields against the Force. I don’t know if Bruck and Xanatos had anything like that, but it certainly adds to how suspicious these two are. Yes, he mused before turning away. Getting a pair of Temple Guards down here is a very good idea.

OOOOOOO

“Wait, that thing is edible?” Angelina nearly squeaked, ducking back into cover after raising her head to look at her and Harry’s current quarry.  “Seriously?!  This better not be some kind of boy-based stupidity, Harry.”

It was morning on the fourth day of their time on this world, and the band had finally begun to really start “Exploring rather than Forting”, as the twins had put it. They were still living mostly in the cave, but with “spellwork and gruntwork”, another twin phrase, the place was, while no real home, livable.  However, food quickly became an issue. 

The train had had no real meals on it. At least, none that the group had found before fleeing in the face of the storm. The snacks they had found instead had been filling enough (in sufficient quantity) to give them energy and keep their stomachs full, but, as Hermione had emphatically pointed out with one of her first lists, snacks couldn’t keep their bodies going in the long term.

For the first two days, no one had been willing to venture all that far away from the cave to try and solve that issue. Like it or not, most of the teens, despite Angelina, Tonks and Roger all agreeing they were probably in a different, random universe, had hoped for someone to suddenly appear and whisk them back to their own world.

It hadn’t happened, but even while thinking of rescue, the teens had kept busy.  The walls of the cave had been carved out further, an outhouse had been made for the girls and boys, their resources organized and so forth. Roger and Seamus had even made a rain collector between them. It still needed to be heated and cleaned before use, and going out to get water from the cave was still something they were working on, but it had already been one of the better additions.

When it came to food, though, the corpse of the strange bug-like monster had proven poisonous.  The spell that Hermione had found in the potions book had not been subtle when pointing it out, too. The thing had gleamed dark purple after the spell hit it, meaning that the flesh would be instantly deadly to the teens.

On the third day, a few of the teens had been sent out on patrol in the air. They hadn’t been attacked, which was good, but they also hadn’t found any animals.  The few times the patrols on broom-back had seen something in the sky, they had been unable to catch them before the birds, if that was what they had been, had raced away, something that continued to be an issue. None of the patrols had ever seen animals on the ground.

Their magic had been forced to pick up the slack, keeping their bodies going. For Harry’s body, this seemed easy enough, as his body had done it several times before, with way less in the way of sugar. The others, though, were suffering by this point, and they'd decided to send Angelina, Harry, Roger and the twins farther from the cave.

Tonks, unfortunately, wasn’t going with them. Her head wound needed more rest, as proven when she had thrown up the first time she tried to get up. She then nearly collapsed in agony when she tried to walk out of the cave on the second day, when the sunlight hit her eyes. Tonks also couldn’t use her magic very well just yet.  The effect was always a bit off. 

She had been teaching them a spell to smooth out stone, something Tonks had learned to create little trinkets for herself when she was younger.  It had done that, but also turned the stone bright pink, like her hair.

They all hoped that more rest would help, but until then, Tonks was cave-ridden. Of the others, the three Gryffindor quidditch team members, Roger, who was a member of the Ravenclaw team, and Harry, who apparently was a natural flyer, were the ones who seemed most at home both in the air and with this world in general. While Blaise, Daphne, or Luna could also have been sent out, it was decided this first extended ranging would be done mostly by the older teens. Harry was added because, of all of them, he showed the least impact from the past few days. 

All of the dimensionally displaced folk were looking a little gaunter, a little less energetic after four days of no protein or even vitamins. They were all still growing, even Tonks, and their bodies needed much more food than an equal number of adults to keep growing and to function.  Their magic could sustain them, but that was all. Harry’s body, on the other hand, was used to going hungry, and his magic was handling this better than any of theirs.

“I hit it with that anti-poison spell Hermione found,” Harry whispered back, keeping low.  The pair were sharing a small hiding place between a few rocks that merged with the side of a small valley. It looked like a rivulet had cut through, creating a small cleft in the cliff face beside their position, with numerous boulders along a small valley below.

“It glowed green and orange at various points on its body, which means it—"

“It is poisonous, but it can be extracted, and might actually be nutritious,” Angelina grumbled. “Great, just great.”

The creature in question looked like a cross between a giant caterpillar and a grub.  It had the overall look of a grub, but the back looked furry like a caterpillar, and its big eyes looked more similar to a caterpillar than a grub’s to Angelina’s eyes. Mind you, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen either. Although I at least know that both caterpillars and grubs are small. They aren’t supposed to be the size of a bloody rhino!

That was indeed the case. This critter was longer than any of the teens were tall, and Angie was pretty certain she’d have to jump to put a hand on its back as it undulated over the boulders around them.  “Right, well, beggars can’t be choosers. I—”

“Down!” Harry hissed, pushing sideways, pressing both of them deeper into the cleft along the side of the rock-strewn valley. An instant later, a shadow appeared to one side of the valley, heading their way, flashing through where they had been standing.

Grunting, Angie grimaced a bit at the impact to her back, but kept silent, not bothering to even chuckle a bit as Harry’s sudden action had pressed his head into the side of her tit, or that Harry had realized that as well, given his hiss of indrawn breath and how quickly he pulled away, hitting his head lightly on the lip of the cleft, his blush visible.  It isn’t like I’ve got much up top yet, barely an A-cup anyway. Not like Tonks and her Metamorph-made, goddess-like body. Bitch.

That thought didn’t remain in her head for long, though, as she watched the avian that had flown down into the valley. It was huge, and looked like a cross between a wyvern and a bird.  It didn’t have the forearms of a proper dragon; it had feathery wings, its back was covered in feathers, and so was its long tail. But its chest and legs were covered by small scales, and it had a long, sinuous neck, with a head that had two horns sticking out of it.  

One claw, easily up to the task of snatching up either teen, slashed through where the pair had been standing.  But the avian seemed not to care which target it hit, as it sped on, its other talon stabbing into the back of the large caterpillar thing. As it began to gain altitude, its neck snaked down, biting hard into the head of the giant caterpillar, tearing out a chunk.

Before it could pick the rhino-sized bug up off the ground more than a few feet, Harry was moving.  A cutting spell, learned from Tonks and made his own, lashed out while Harry made a grabbing motion with his other hand. The first spell struck at the base of the wyvern-like avian’s head, and it screeched in pain, but the spell didn’t penetrate, such was the creature’s durability. 

The grabbing motion Harry had made though -the second spell he had cast worked, and the birds take off was arrested, it’s momentum halted for a moment.  That moment was enough to mess up its flight, and it crashed to the ground as his spell ended.

Angie pushed herself out of the cleft and joined Harry, casting a fire spell, the same one Blaise had used during the first fights on this world.  It slammed into one wildly flapping wing as the wyvern (it was just easier using a single term like that, even mentally) tried to turn, and seared through its wing, causing the wyvern to shriek in agony. 

Now, as it pulled in its wings, the boulder-strewn slope worked against the wyvern. Its injured wing scraped the mountainside, while its talons couldn’t find purchase.  A second later, the wyvern released its prey and began to stumble down the slope, squishing a portion of the grub’s body as it lost it’s footing.

“Should we try to kill it or drive it off?” Angie shouted over the sound of the screeching wyvern and the stones rumbling, more than willing to follow Harry’s orders in a fight.

“Kill it. That’ll give us two animals to try. Get on your broomstick, attack it from behind,” Harry ordered, as the beast finished turning in their direction and now screeched, coming back up towards them. 

A protective shield appeared between them, scintillating blue, and with another push, Harry sent it into the beast’s outstretched head, blasting it backward.

Angie took this opportunity to grab up her broomstick and zoom into the air, shaking her head. How the heck does Harry manipulate spells like that? A Protego’s not all that impressive, but it shouldn’t be able to be moved around like that.  Or be solid enough to crash into something.

The creature screeched, stumbling back, losing its footing, only for one wing to smash through Harry’s shield, sending rocks towards him.  Harry dodged and ducked, but one piece of shrapnel cut open his shoulder, while another sliced over his forearm.  Another, thankfully not too sharp, caught him across the cheek, but Harry kept moving, another cutting spell slicing into the creature’s wing.  Its wing tip was sliced away, and the wyvern shrieked again.

Then Angie struck it from above. Another fire spell covered the monster, and it screamed, flinching, trying to run away. A moment later, Harry launched a portion of a shattered stone forward into the creature’s mouth, tearing out a portion of the monster’s mouth, but not killing it. The monster retaliated, lashing out with its injured wing, faster than Harry could dodge. 

Or rather, should have been able to dodge. Because the moment that blow began, Harry had already moved. Somehow, Harry had felt that attack coming, like his magic had warned him it was coming. It was the same feeling that had told him to take a chance and attack this bird rather than let it go.

No, he realized, as another warning went through his brain, forcing him to duck under a boulder as the wyvern went for a bite, its neck letting it move its head around ridiculously fast.  Not my magic.  The background magic of this place! It’s… helping me? Warning me of dangers?

A Difindo spell hit the beast’s head from behind, only to do little, the spell causing another small cut there. The beast was either magically resistant or just plain durable, and a second later it twisted around, trying to bite at Angie. Angie was already dodging, something warning her of the danger, but she didn’t question it as Harry had.

However, this was the last mistake the beast would ever commit.  As one clawed leg went out from under it, the beast having overextended, Harry reached out with his magic, grabbing and hurling as many sharp stones as he could find upwards as fast as he could from below the beast.

That wasn’t much, as the pain of his injuries was hampering his ability to concentrate, but it was enough.  The rear and underbelly near the wyvern’s sole pair of legs were not as protected as the rest of the beast, and it released a loud squeal of agony, dropping to the slope.  It began to tumble, still screeching, still alive, but no longer even thinking about fighting, bleeding and ruined. 

Angie followed it down, her eyes narrowing as she prepared another spell, one Tonks had taught only her and Roger, a lethal spell that created a thin, drilling beam of magic, made to break through solid defenses.  Given how tough this beast was, though, Angie had to wait for a clear shot at a weak point.  She found it, her hand and magic reacting before Angie’s conscious mind caught up, and a beam of magic, red and orange twisting around one another, left her hand, finger-thin.

The bolt hit one of the earlier cuts in the creature’s back and burst through, puncturing the creature’s spine. The beast’s screeches cut off, and it continued tumbling boneless down the slope until it got stuck between a few boulders.

Harry stared after it, swaying, feeling, for once, his magic going quiescent inside. He then grimaced as the pain of his wounds hit him, harder as his adrenaline began to calm down.  “Okay, that wasn’t fun.”

“You’re telling me,” Angie grumbled as she came down, landing easily beside him. The wyvern was already glowing a nice light green, though, meaning the thing was edible and good for them.  “Now sit down on that boulder over there. I want to look at those cuts.”

Oddly, the trolley lady had kept some wine and a few bottles of even stronger spirits in her cart.  Why was anyone’s guess, but Seamus had grabbed them all, arguing they could be used as disinfectants.  That argument carried the day, even though none of the teens working with him had believed him.

Now, Angie pulled out a tiny bottle they had all been given with some of the spirits in it, before dabbing at the injuries on Harry’s body, shaking her head. “This one to your forearm, I’m going to wrap it up. It’s too long and deep for me to use an Episkey.  The shoulder and the one to your cheek, at least, can be closed now.  The one on your cheek isn’t even going to scar, hero boy.”

“Ugh. Hero boy, again? I thought that joke was left behind days ago,” Harry grumbled, hissing at the touch of the alcohol.

“Well, how about Great Provider, then?” Angie snickered, leaning forward as she began to bind up his arm with some rags made for the purpose. They had all been given such from Daphne and Hermione, the two organizers of the group, taken from some of the robes that were too big for them they’d taken from the train.

 If it was a bit more than necessary, that was her own business, although she did giggle internally as Harry suddenly stiffened, his cheeks reddening noticeably as he looked down the top of her shirt.

Guh, Harry’s mental processes shut down for a second. Hormones are the bloody devil. Who knew I’d ever agree with that old librarian and her muttering?

Angie wasn’t showing much, but Harry still had to get used to being around other people, let alone attractive, slightly older girls.  Luna and her continued attempts to ‘fix’ his hugger hadn't had much of a result either. He knew he shouldn’t look, but also couldn’t pull his eyes away until Angie pulled back, the inches of gently curved, smooth black skin too alluring. 

Holding back a snicker at Harry’s deer-in-the-headlights look, Angie turned away. “Come on, let’s check out our prize.”

The two of them carefully made their way down the slope to the wyvern, stopping to examine the grub thing.  It was still largely intact, having been thrown clear of the battle, although its head and back were messed up by the wyvern’s assault.  Still, it was nutritious in some fashion.  “Although I will want to take a picture of Hermione, Daphne and Blaise’s faces when they see it,” Angie mused.

“Considering I’m not certain how we’ll go about cooking it or whatever, I don’t know if I’d blame them,” Harry muttered, grunting as he nearly stumbled, his shoulder and forearm bothering him. Angie steadied him, then the two of them were right above the wyvern, staring at it.  Another spell, just in case, and both grinned as the corpse glowed blue.  “Yes!”

“We’ll levitate between us and head back now. We’re what, two hours of flight out?” Angie thought aloud.

“Something like that. I… I don’t get the sense there’s anything else around here for us to find, so we’re good.  Should we leave the bug behind, or try for both?”

“I think we need to try for both,” Angie said reluctantly.  “If we can, anyway.  We might need whatever nutrients or vitamins the bug has even more than the protein from the monster, who I really hope tastes like chicken.”

Harry laughed wanly at that, then, between them, they set the grub on top of the wyvern, with Angie using a sticking charm to make certain they didn’t part company.  Getting them into the air was taxing, and as they flew, both Angie and Harry began to get tired quickly. The spells needed to keep the thing in the air and moving behind their brooms were a constant drain. They also had to fly their brooms.  Keeping their attention split like that wasn’t fun, and Harry was already down one arm, so it was doubly hard for him.

Thankfully, Roger, the only one of the group to go on a hunting trip on his own, saw them coming, having headed out from the cave at a different angle. He swooped in from above, and instantly began to help, his voice a whisper. He had yet to get used to not needing the verbal part of the spell, and despite four days of working on it, Roger insisted that his wand really helped to direct specific spells. “Wingardium Leviosa, Lassoius.”

The weight of the thing instantly decreased further, under the impact of the first spell, while a rope of blueish energy shot out from Roger’s arm. It essentially created a lure almost of energy that wrapped around the dead monster, letting Roger help to tug it along.

As it did, Harry and Angie both sighed in relief.  That was easily the longest active use of magic either of them had ever done, and with how little food they were operating on, that had hit even harder than before. 

“Flipping heck, you two,” Roger grunted, as he grunted, the impact of the magical drain hitting him in turn.  “How heavy are… is this two critters, or a horrible amalgamation of two in one?”

“Two in one, the heck were you thinking?” Angie answered, while Harry stayed silent, looking up at a small, rapidly growing dot in the distance. 

“Let’s just say that I read some fantasy novels that my dad acquired from the Muggle world, and they have some very strange ideas. This Dr. Moreau character in particular. He makes the Lovegoods look sane,” Roger said, watching as Hedwig flew down,

Alighting on Harry’s broomstick for a second, Hedwig’s already large eyes widened, her body language showing concern, as her gaze locked on his injured arm.

Or at least, to Harry it did. “I’m okay, girl. It isn’t broken or anything. It’s just a cut, too deep for Episkey to deal with.”  Although why the heck you can’t just overpower an Episkey spell, or I can’t just close it on my own, I don’t know.  Harry had tried both while Angie had been moving the grub on top of the wyvern corpse, but neither had worked.  It was very weird to him, and he felt almost like it was the spell’s fault rather than the magic, but that was just a weird idea of his.

The owl’s eyes narrowed, and the hoot she gave seemed to indicate what she thought about that, and about Harry underplaying things.

Harry raised that same injured arm and stroked her gently.  “See, I can still use it.”

Hedwig precked once more, slightly mollified, and Harry continued, stroking her chest feathers gently. “Do you think you could head ahead of us, get a few of the others in the air to help? I don’t think we’re even halfway back, and at the rate we’re going, we’re going to need some help.”

From directly above and behind the two monsters, Roger exchanged a glance with Angie. “How exactly is an owl going to communicate that? Note that I’m not asking how Harry is communicating with Hedwig. Their familiar relationship is pretty clear at this point.”

“Which makes me wish we had found a book about familiar relationships,” Harry said, shaking his head as Hedwig hopped off of his broomstick, letting the thermals catch her for a second before winging away. “As for Hedwig, she’ll find a way.  Up to and including lifting a broomstick in her talons and smacking them with it.  Or maybe writing out the message in a notebook.”

“Heh, I’d like to see that,” Roger snorted. “Although given how smart and quick Hedwig is, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

Around thirty minutes later, just as a makeshift flag came into view on the horizon, sticking out of the side of the mountain, two other small flying things could be seen coming towards them.

By that point, the trio dragging the wyvern through the air had also dealt with a few predatory attacks from other avians. Most of them looked like bats, or at least had leathery wings like bats, but bats normally didn’t have 4 to 6 limbs beyond their wings. Or scorpion tails.

There had even been a few birds like Hedwig, although obviously not from any kind of avian species that any of them could recognize. Their beaks were different, and the bird wings looked a little strange to Earth-born eyes. However, a few loud spells from Roger were enough to scare the birds off, even if a few of them still circled above them. These were scavengers, not alpha predators, and now, as Hedwig precked angrily and made for them, the birds scattered still further.

Luna and Blaise were there, with Luna smiling cheerily as she flicked her fingers in the usual gesture for the hovering spell, while Blaise, perhaps in some choreographed moves, took over helping pull the hovering mass along.  “My word, but someone seems to have had a successful hunting mission. Which of you is the mighty hunter, here to provide for the rest of us poor peons?”

“Me and Angie did it together,” Harry answered quickly before Angie could try to lay it all on him.  “Both animals tested positive for having nutrients, although there are parts of the slug which are poisonous, so we’ll have to be careful.”

Hermione had found two different spells to use to find if an animal was poisonous or not. And yes, it had to be animals. There was an entirely different spell needed to figure out if a plant was poisonous, and a third for legumes. 

Yes, that bothered Hermione a lot. If something was poisonous, then shouldn’t that be a broad spectrum? Why would it matter what you are actually analyzing?  Still, one of the two spells for animals could actually create a light-based diagram that would allow them to figure out where and what was poisonous and what wasn’t.

Harry had basically combined the two spells into his own type of spell, as had Luna, Daphne, and, surprisingly, the two twins. However, for more detail work, using the actual second spell, Vrósimo Den eínai vrósimo (Edible, not Eatable) was probably a better idea.

“Well, it’s quite nice. I have had grubs before while camping out with daddy, and there is this particular type of spice you can add to them that makes any kind of grub most delectable. Although I don’t know if it will work on something from which you can cut out steaks,” Luna mused, staring first at the grub, then at the giant wyvern-like thing. 

“And here we have another apex predator, perhaps? That could be both good and bad for us, depending on how wide its territory is, and if it is a family-oriented creature. Luckily, if you ran into it during the day, that probably means its supposed family won’t hunt at night, when we are most vulnerable.”

Harry twitched as Luna flew over, reaching across from her broomstick, somewhat haphazardly, to give him a sideways hug. After the past few days, when she had begun to spring hugs like this on him, he no longer flinched, but he still wasn’t comfortable with it, and certainly the current circumstances weren’t the best either. “Luna, now really isn’t the time for that. Not only am I a little bloodsoaked, but we’re in midair!”

“Booo, there is no time that is a bad time for hugs! So long as you’re both clothed anyway. Mom was most insistent on that, I remember. I went to hug daddy after he had just gotten out of the shower and had forgotten his clothing in their bedroom, and she was most displeased with both of us. Admittedly, I was only five at the time, but I still remember that rule,” Luna said blithely, still hugging Harry from the side.

“…” Harry fell silent, looking for help from the other two. Roger simply shook his head, as did Blaise, both of them simply putting that down as a Lovegood thing. Angie, on the other hand, stated firmly, “I’m glad your mother was clear on that, and it is a good rule. Keep to it.” Just because I liked teasing Harry a little bit earlier doesn’t mean that any of us are in any position to get involved or anything like that.

“And maybe keep your hugs to when both parties have their feet on the ground,” Roger added now that someone else had spoken up, shaking his head. “Whether or not you remain with both you and the person you’re hugging with their feet on the ground, that’s up to the two of you, but midair definitely is not the place for hugs.”

Angelina laughed at that, while Blaise chuckled, though Harry was a little confused, both by the wording and what it was supposed to mean. Luna simply shrugged and moved back, taking a position above to one side of the creature across from Roger. Blaise had remained ahead of them, and now twisted around on his broomstick, leading the way forward.

Between the five of them, it was a lot easier, but still, by the time they started to head down towards the cave, Angie and Harry were gasping, with Angie leaning forward, nearly at the point where she was going to slump off her broomstick. Luckily, Daphne had come up as well when they started to descend, and she leaned over, steadying the older girl, although she didn’t volunteer to help with the spell work, as they were nearly there.

The area around the cave had gone through a transformation over the past four days thanks to all of the work they’d been doing to make the area more inhabitable. The slope outside the cave, which at one point had been decently steep for merely human bodies, had been flattened.  The older teens had used cutting spells on a few other segments of the mountainside, and the younger teens had then fused them together with other spells, a mixture of construction spells and transfiguration spells that had pushed both groups pretty hard mentally. 

Doing this created a ledge-like area about the size of a bedroom’s floor. Thanks to the work at cutting and slicing into other segments of the mountainside, the ledge led in a few different directions. One way linked via a set of staircases to where work was ongoing on creating a bath area. The other led downward to the two outhouses, which were easily the most makeshift of the changes, being made mostly of wood glued together haphazardly to create two very makeshift buildings stuck on stilts of various sizes.  It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

The wood came from work Roger and the twins did. They had scouted around the mountainside while everyone else was working on the interior of the cave, and had come back dragging several large tree trunks through the air.  Now, a surplus of wood sat between a few rocks further down the slope, ready for other projects.

They’d also brought back samples of various bushes and other plants, just to see if they had nutritional or magical properties. The plants didn’t have any of the first, but the teens had yet to really start testing for magical properties.  They weren’t quite ready yet;  Potions needed their own separate cave, just like Angelina had been forbidden from shifting from a sandbox to stone when it came to runes just yet.

The work on the interior of the cave had also been ongoing.  Now, all the teens had their own separate small sleeping cubicle cut into the side of the cave, with numerous spare robes to use as blankets, bedding and pillows.  A small firepit sat in the middle, and some of the trunks and clothing had been used to create seats around the area.  The other trunks were organized, each type in their own section, and the library trunk was almost always open in one corner of the cave.

While they had no intention of staying here for years or even more than a few months, it was going to be their temporary home away from home. All the teens wanted to make it as comfortable as possible, a stark contrast to the sweltering heat and muggy weather here.

By the time they landed, Neville, Hermione and Seamus came out, staring at the two monsters that the hunting party brought back.  “Damn me, makes me remember a few times when me mates and I’d dare one another ta eat bugs,” Seamus muttered.

“That is both disgusting and incredibly unhygienic,” Hermione muttered, shaking her head, then, as she saw Harry’s arm, she hissed, rushing forward.  “You’re hurt!”

Between them, Hermione and Tonks were able to see to Harry’s arm, replacing the bandages over it, and slowly suturing it closed using a spell that Tonks walked Hermione through.  It was an advanced version of the Episkey she had learned to help take the Auror test at the end of what had been supposed to be her last year at Hogwarts. 

“It’ll need to be renewed every day, or else you’ll get scars, but I doubt you’ll need to worry about curse damage or anything like that, Harry. And who knows, if it does scar, maybe Luna and the other girls will like a lad with some history on his skin, yeah?” Tonks teased, watching Hermione work.

She did not try to help because her magic was still wonky that morning, and simply walked Hermione through the spell and the visualization for it. The girl was pretty frightening, really, in how quickly she picked up spells via instruction or book reading, and she was easily the best-controlled spellcaster among the would-be firsties.

She saw her joke falling flat, and Tonks grimaced a bit internally before trying to make another one that had some of the others chuckling, even as Tonks’ own thoughts remained on Harry. To her chagrin, Tonks still hadn’t figured out a way to bring up the fact that she was related to Harry with him just yet. From what she had learned over the past few days from how he reacted to things and some small hints he showed, Tonks felt Harry hadn’t had the best of childhoods, to put it mildly, and she wasn’t certain how he would react to being related to someone other than the people he called the Dursleys. Not once had Harry called them family, and even calling them relatives made him grimace.

Worse on Tonks’ side of things, she honestly hadn’t thought much about Harry at all for years beyond vague feelings about the whole Boy Who Lived nonsense. Now, Tonks was basically racking her brain to try and remember every conversation she had overheard her parents having about Harry, as well as what little she remembered of James and Lily when she was a toddler, to tell Harry to try and smooth things over. Unfortunately, this wasn’t all that much.

However, Tonks couldn’t let it bother her for long, and she listened to Harry and Angelina explain the battle they’d had with the wyvern thing.  “Good job, you two, although bringing them along together like that, we’re going to need to make sure that none of the poison from the caterpillar thing has gotten into the meat of the bird.”

“And run the same poison-finding spells again on the bird several times as we’re cooking it. Just to make sure that nothing airborne gets into the meat,” Hermione said worriedly. “The last thing we need is for any of us to get sick.”

Harry nodded at that, but when he made to stand up, he found Hermione pushing him back down, wagging a finger in his face. “Oh no you don’t! Cutting that thing up and prepping it is going to be a spell-intensive process, and both you and Angie look as if you’re dead on your feet.”

Indeed, Angelina had already fallen asleep. Roger and Daphne had been forced to help her into the cave and to her cubicle. She had practically crashed off her broomstick thanks to how exhausted she was.

“That’s fine, but when we get to the actual cooking part, well, I think I’m the only one here with any real experience in that, so…” Harry trailed off, shrugging.

“As the oldest here, I’d like to say otherwise, but me mum always did the cooking for us,” Tonks said.

Daphne shrugged her shoulders and muttered something about her family’s house-elves doing all the cooking, to which Blaise and Roger agreed. Luna laughed, saying that her daddy and her “Lived off sandwiches and Mrs. Weasley’s good graces. That and stew at home.  When we’re camping, well, enough spices and cook time and you get there eventually.”

Hermione said she had actually cooked a time or two alongside her mother, but that amounted more to cutting and chopping ingredients. Yet that was a step up from everyone else. Seamus said it was girls’ work, something that got him thumped by Daphne and Hermione alike and an eye roll from Harry.

Separating the bug from the wyvern went quite swiftly with so many hands helping, and then, as Harry directed them, Seamus, Hermione and Daphne began to carve up the wyvern.  Luna took over the carving of the giant bug creature, humming to herself happily as she worked, passing off poison sacks to Roger for safe storage. Meanwhile, Neville prepared the various other ingredients under Harry’s direction.

When the twins returned that night carrying what looked like some kind of horrible, spiked version of a deer, they were greeted with an almost irresistible aroma of cooked chicken on the breeze.

Harry had used some local salt rocks they had found, along with some plants that looked remarkably like rosemary and a few other things from the potions supplies to create what amounted to giant chicken kebabs, with each bit of chicken basically the size of a hand, sliced thinly before being placed on the large skewers. It was smelling so good that many of the teens have begun to salivate.

“My word,”

“But that,”

“Smells tasty!” The twins exclaimed one after another. “It makes our offering seem small in comparison.”

Both looked a little worse for wear, with several rags tied around their arms and legs covering wounds. Fred was also sporting a black eye. “We also regret to inform you all that the forest down there is remarkably deadly to human-type life.

George’s hand looked worse for wear.  “If not for our broomsticks, we wouldn’t have gotten away from this… well, we think it was the local equivalent of a fox maybe, right, brother?”

“Indeed, ugly twin. Small-tier predators, but they certainly weren’t scared to take us on.” Both became serious as Fred went on. “There was another one of those giant bug creatures as well, and that thing chased us! It was almost like it could sense us wherever we went, even when we were in the sky.”

“Yeah, if we didn’t use our broomsticks, that thing would’ve gotten us several times over. Luckily, we also flew over the territory of one of those giant troll-like things, and it took exception to the bug thing trying to pass through,” George added with a snort.

“Get over here and let us look at your injuries,” Hermione growled, pointing at both twins and then to the ground in front of her.  “Neville, Blaise, help me with these two.”

Watching Hermione badger the two older boys made Harry chuckle, and Daphne smiled faintly as she sat beside him, watching, before taking a bite of the wyvern. She blinked, then stared at it thoughtfully.  Harry caught that and looked over at her in concern.  “Is all right? Too dry? I was basically guessing how long to let it cook for; the meat isn’t chicken, as much as we’ve all been using that term to describe it.”

Actually, it was the magic of this place that had told Harry to stop cooking the chicken, but Harry wasn’t about to comment on that. How helpful the magic here was was something he wanted to think about for a bit, even if he was aware that Luna had already pointed it out several times. Still, that was a far cry from the background magic of this place helping to sense danger and then helping him cook.

“There’s nothing wrong, Harry. On the contrary, it’s fantastic,” Daphne said enthusiastically, biting into it again, her normal self-control disappearing. “Sho good!”

That brought everyone’s attention back to the food in front of them. For several minutes, Hermione and Neville were the only ones who abstained from grabbing up a plate and quickly chowing down, even the twins grabbing a pair as she went over their injuries. Then everyone began to praise the food, cheering and jabbering excitedly.

“Well, I think I speak for us all when I say three cheers to the mighty hunters for bringing back meat, four cheers to the cook for serving it, and here’s to all of us for surviving! Let’s keep that up, yeah?” Tonks said.  She was answered by hoots and hollers all around as the night of the fourth day of the teens on this strange world began to close in around their camp.

They were unaware that the ripples of their arrival had yet to truly settle.  And not just in terms of the magic of this universe, either…

OOOOOOO

When Sly Moore woke up, the first thing she felt, beyond a migraine the size of a planet, was fear. Through a mind wracked by agony, Sly Moore remembered that she and her Master, her Lord, the center of her universe, had been at a political party before that, that PAIN came. Before the Force itself shifted, like a vast, universe-spanning tectonic plate moving sideways hundreds of miles, upending everything on its surface.

Sly Moore could not have retained her consciousness against that impact. The last thing she remembered seeing was a Jedi collapsing, and now her mind instantly filled with the fear that someone had connected those particular dots. That she had been found out.

Quickly, that fear faded out only to be replaced by another horror, the dread of her Master. What her Lord would do to Sly if she was discovered and if that led to him, if that led to a danger to the Great Plan.

That fear buoyed both her normal reflexes and gave her greater control of the Dark Side, and even as the two Temple Guards stirred outside, she pulled her Force Stealth around her. This hid her presence in the Force even more strongly than her automatic defenses had.

Sly kept her eyes closed, any hint of her being conscious under firm control. For a few moments, she listened to two sets of footfalls pass nearby. This was followed by a murmur of voices, one brash and youthfully arrogant, the other calm and mature. “–said that there wasn’t any way they could be stirring without us feeling it in the Force. Not with how reactive the Force has become since The Shift. Besides, they’re stuck behind bars and have no weapons.”

“Senator Palpatine and Adjutant Moore both collapsed because they are Force users of some kind. Since when do closed doors or bars matter to those of us who can use the Force? Your arrogance does you no credit, my young friend.”

“Maybe, but I’m still right in this instance. Obi-Wan is jumping at shadows. Now, I won’t say Obi doesn’t have reason for it. Not after what he’s faced in the past, with the runaway Xanatos and his machinations. But I think he’s off base with these two.”

“The other members of the padawan council don’t agree.  Nor do I or the other temple guards.” The older voice said firmly, which ended the argument even as it made the younger Jedi voice a question.

“Actually, Master Loro, I was wondering why the guards haven’t taken over organizing everything. There’s enough of you awake now to form a council, at least.”

“Because we are guards.  We do not lead. We do not direct, nor teach.  We guard.  To become a guard is to sublimate any such thoughts or proclivities in that direction to guard the greater whole,” the older voice answered, his tone firm, then wry.  “Even in moments like this.  Besides, your fellows have certainly risen to the challenge magnificently. You younger minds certainly seem to be dealing with the changes to the Force better than us older fellows, as evinced by how few Masters or even Knights have woken up.”

Throughout this conversation, Sly kept her eyes closed, keeping her breathing even and everything else the same as best she could, showing body control that even a Jedi would reckon as incredible. For what felt like an hour, the two guards simply stood outside the prison cell she had been apparently assigned. Having two Jedi so near felt like goosebumps on her skin, a creepy-crawly feeling that, in her current mental state, nearly forced her to act. Only literal decades of practice keeping herself and her Force ability hidden, and her fear of her Master, gave Sly Moore the willpower to keep still.

Eventually, the two guards shifted away, the feeling fading. 

Sly did not strike then. That would have been premature. Instead, as they pulled back, she opened her eyes slowly, looking around to find her worst fears all too accurate. She was captured. Captured by the Jedi. Only the Jedi would have jail cells like this, so lacking in modern technology as well as amenities. There was a cot and a small table, nothing more. No window, no place to go to the bathroom, just the bars of the cell, which was probably more for Jedi who had fallen from grace for whatever reason than actual prisoners.

Even worse than that for Sly though, a sight that had her hyperventilate almost, was what lay in the cell across from her: Darth Sidious, Senator Sheev Palpatine of Naboo, lay there, unconscious. He had been placed haphazardly on the cot, half-on, half-off the bare hard mattress.  

Her Master, her lover, her teacher. All of those would have been accurate to describe the feelings Sly Moore felt towards Sidious. He had raised her up, taught her, seduced her, given Sly purpose, will, and a goal.

To see Sidious laid low like this was infuriating, even as a small part of Sly knew it wasn’t the Jedi who had done this, but the Force itself. Rage boiled within her, rage and hate enough to nearly break through her Force Stealth.

But Sly waited. She waited until she heard the two guards patrolling coming back her way. How long that took, Sly didn’t know, but still she waited, her anger and fury bottled up behind her Force Stealth, waiting to be unleashed.

Sly Moore was not a powerful force user. She was no Darth Maul, a warrior trained only for violence and death, let alone a true Darth, steeped in everything the Dark Side had to offer. Yet for all her lack of strength, Sly was better than Maul at Force Stealth.  She had to be to remain on Coruscant, at the center of the Jedi Order’s power and not be discovered, just like her Master and his teacher before him.  

Sly had supreme control of her Force powers, and she was literally loyal onto death to Sidious. Thus, Sly had been taught numerous Force skills and abilities to serve as an agent in the halls of the Senatorial district for Sidious.

When the two guards turned away from the cells to resume their patrol back down the corridor once more, Sly struck. Before either guard could discern their danger through the Force, her Force powers struck their target.

The two men would have been a strange pairing at any other time, being a Temple Guard and a padawan. Normally, Temple Guards worked in pairs, and you had to be a Knight to join them and go through the proper training to become a Temple Guard.  But only seven of them had woken up yet from the mental turmoil of The Shift. With two guards on duty at the entrance from the Senate district and four more at the entrance from the Temple’s personal landing area after the criminal underworld’s violent attempt to attack the temple a few days after the Shift had hit.

That only left one man to be assigned this duty. Although in this case, perhaps it would have been better if he had been alone. Because while he marched with his lightpike in hand, the padawan accompanying him had his lightsaber on his belt.

Now, the green blade ignited as it flew off the padawan’s belt, slicing the padawan’s hand off as he reached for it before cutting the temple guard’s arm off at the shoulder.  “ARGH!!!”

Unlike Sith warriors, the pain eroded their ability to use the Force. Both fell to their knees, howling, although the Temple Guard’s shouts served a purpose. “Alarm! Alarm! The prisoners are—”

That was as far as he got before his companion’s lightsaber twirled through the air under Sly’s command, slicing his head off. The padawan tried to raise his remaining hand, tried to use a Force Push, but the young cosian couldn't concentrate through the haze of pain from losing his hand. A second later, the cosian’s own lightsaber stabbed him straight in the back and through his chest, killing him instantly.

A vindictive sneer on her face, Sly twitched her fingers, and the glowing lightsaber flew to her hand through the bars of her cell, whereupon she cut her way out, her sneer deepening at how arrogant the Jedi were. These are obviously penitent cells, but what if someone in them isn't feeling very penitent? Then they were, very obviously, less than useless against a Force user.

Seconds later, she had sliced her way into her Master’s cell.

With her fear and anger still riding her, Sly did not realize that reacting like this was, in fact, a mistake. She had no thought of prevarication or even trying to talk her way out of this situation. Not before she had killed her guards and certainly not after. Not for herself, not for her Master, not realizing that in doing so, Sly Moore had doomed the Great Plan. Without Sidious to direct her, she had become, in a way, less than an animal. Flight was her first and only instinct, to get them away as quickly as possible.

Tucking the Lightpike of the Temple Guard into Sidious’s belt, Sly began making an attempt to wake him up, pushing her Force senses into Sidious’s mind. It didn’t work, but she could feel that his mind was starting to recover, hidden behind the automatic Force Stealth that the Master had taught Sly. Hopefully soon, she thought, before turning her feet towards the hallway leading up to the praxeum.

There had been no response yet, but there would be when the Jedi felt the deaths of the guards, as they surely would. With that in mind, Sly moved swiftly, carrying her Master via Force Levitation behind her.

OOOOOOO

In this supposition, Sly was quite correct. Other Jedi had indeed felt the deaths of the guards. While Aayla and a few of the other members of the ‘padawan council’ reeled from Sly’s sudden reveal, unused to feeling such sudden hate in the Force as well as the death of fellow Jedi, Obi-Wan leapt to his feet, nodding his head towards Hrimiyarr, who had already grabbed up a communicator. “Hrimiyarr, with me. Aayla, grab several of the senior padawans, order them down to the entry hall and warn the Temple Guard. We’ll need their help.”

With that, Obi-Wan was off, Hrimiyarr on his heels, then passing him quickly in the loping stride of a running Wookie, further assisted by a Jedi’s Force-enhanced abilities, passing a dozen younglings and toddlers heading the other way, herded to safety by Urno.

Thanks to the two floors between them and the cells chosen for the strange Force users, the Wookie and human pair arrived at around the same time that Sly Moore came out of the hallway leading downward, Senator Palpatine floating in the air behind her. The four Temple Guards on duty at the entrance to the temple’s private landing area had also formed up, and had warned the younglings and padawans in the area to retreat down the hall to the classrooms on this floor.

For a moment, as Obi-Wan peered around the Temple Guards, he saw the Umbaran woman quail. But that fear just lent her more power, and Obi-Wan watched aghast as, for the second time in his life, he saw someone’s eyes turn yellow in response to the amount of Dark Side energies they were pulling in. Just like Bruck!

Even as one of the Temple Guards shouted, ‘Surrender, Adjutant Moore’ the woman was charging forward, and as she did, over the body of the senator came the two bodies of the dead guards hurled ahead of her. “Cursed Jedi!”

The Temple Guards automatically shifted away, turning their half circle into a full circle as they went to attack.

Unfortunately, this had isolated one of their number. Diving down at his feet like a snake with a move that looked almost like it came from Form I Shii-Cho, Sly sliced one of his feet off, causing him to cry and crumple to the floor, but not before she stabbed upwards in an economic move from Makashi, her lightsaber taking the Knight in the lower stomach even as she twirled around, blocking a blow from a lightpike.

Sly couldn’t both attack like this and concentrate on her Force Lift, and Palpatine fell forgotten on the ground, lying face down, still clad in his senatorial robes from days ago.

The guards closed in on Sly, while Obi-Wan and Hrimiyarr, joined by Aayla and a few others, also circled around, waiting for an opening if need be. With so many lightsabers and so many friendlies around, pushing forward without need would only harm their own side of the conflict, something all the Jedi instinctively knew.   

Unable to join the Force Gestalt that the guards were trying to create, they would get in one another’s way.

The lightpikes of the Temple Guards crashed and slashed in, threatening to overwhelm the woman, but a desperate, fear-fueled Force Push slowed two of them enough for her to only fight one of them for a second, and she hurled herself up and over his lightpike. With a tug, the lightpike from the slain guard came into her hand, and she whirled it, slamming the butt down into the leg of another guard who had stepped just a little too close.

Her weapon came up, but a Force Push was launched at the same time from the other guard, battering her away. The next second, Sly was forced to leap upwards and away from another strike that would’ve cleaved her from behind.

“By the Force, clear the praxeum!” one of the guards shouted, but too late, as Sly jumped out and away from them, with the guard hesitating to follow.

Eager to help, too many of the older padawans had arrived to replace the youngsters that had already been removed, and now, Sly’s Force Jump landed her among several green-bladed padawans.

Her lightsaber blazed, slicing into one before it was stopped by another, but that one grunted in pain as the first padawan’s lightsaber leapt up, activating and slicing her leg off at the knee. Within a few moments, Sly used strikes that almost looked like those of Djem So to Obi-Wan’s eyes, but angrier and wilder, battering aside several other padawans, but slaying no more as they had recovered from their shock and now backed off, letting the Temple Guard leap forward, closing once more even as Obi-Wan and Hrimiyarr joined them.

Jumping over several of the other padawans, Obi-Wan lashed out with his lightsaber, only to find it deflected, and then had to twist around and dodge through several strikes from Force-controlled lightsabers, hissing a bit as one of them nearly hit his leg, searing away his clothing but not hitting any flesh. And that will teach me to work with others, blast it.

He slid along the ground, coming to a stop against the far wall for a second as he watched the fight.

Sly Moore was forced back the way she had come into the hallway leading to the cells by the guards, who were obviously straining. Many of the Temple Guards were very good combatants, but they specialized in anti-blaster combat, Shien rather than Soresu. Still, the three remaining were working well, defending one another and pushing the woman back, and she no longer had the concentration to use her Force to control the scattered lightsabers from her victims.

So why is the Force whispering a warning to me?

Sly used Force powers better than her lightsaber, Pushes, subtle jabs, tugs at arm and leg, but she was tiring. Sly’s anger, fear and hate for the Jedi, hate for what had happened to her Master, fueled her power, but it wasn’t enough. A strike nearly hit Sly’s shoulder. Another one nearly cut her across the center of her chest, burning away clothing, but not skin. Only a desperate Force Push hurling her three attackers away saved her, and she retreated further along the hallway.

The Jedi could feel her desperation, and one of the Temple Guards, his face obscured by his helmet, said, “Surrender, Sly Moore. This can only end one way. There’s been enough death today.”

…Wait, the Force isn’t warning me about Sly… the Senator!  “Back away from the Senator!” Alas, Obi-Wan’s shout came too late, for just as he spoke, Sheev Palpatine woke.  The motions that Sly had put his body through since waking, and the nearby violence, had finished the process his body had been going through to recover from the Shift in the Force.

Sidious went from unconscious and completely comatose to awake and aware within an instant. An instant where everything changed as Sheev’s Force Stealth fell away.

It was as if someone had released a bomb of black ink onto a canvas previously streaked with white and grey. A miasma of cloying darkness, of hate and rage thrummed through the Force, coloring everything and everyone around it. All of the Jedi felt it, every single Jedi conscious in the temple, every youngling and child.

It drove many of the padawans to their knees, reeling, trying desperately to keep Sheev’s hate and rage from drowning their own minds. Younglings fell to the floor, fear and shock freezing many in place or simply falling into a stupor. Babies and toddlers wailed, and even the most experienced padawans stepped back, frozen for a second as they pushed against this overwhelming darkness that had suddenly exploded in the Force.

Obi-Wan was the only one who had even felt someone like Sly Moore through the Force before. He’d thought his confrontations with Bruck and witnessing his Master’s confrontation with the fallen Jedi Xanatos had prepared him for the impact of a Dark Side user on the Force and, worse, that impact on his Force Precognition, a necessary skill for any Jedi to anticipate and feel the flow of a battle.

Yet not even Xanatos had emitted the raw anger and hatred of the individual creating impact in the Force now, and as the Jedi reeled, Sly exulted, regaining her footing and shifting the momentum of the battle.

In retrospect, perhaps Sly should’ve waited. Perhaps she should have thought to act alongside her Master from the start in order to escape. But Sly’s fear, not her anger or hatred, had driven her. That was, in point of fact, the underlying reason why Sly had never been a true apprentice. Fear had always been the controlling factor with her, fear and the adoration for Sidious that fear had created within her. That made Sly useful, but only rarely as a blunt object or someone making quick decisions.

For Sidious, as for most Darths, the feeling they drew from the most was hatred. Hatred of the Jedi, hatred of anything and anyone standing in his way of what Sidious thought was his destiny.

A destiny, Sidious knew even as he rose, hands clasping the staff of the lightpike that had been stuck haphazardly through his belt, that Sidious knew would never come to pass now. Even if Sidious had somehow been able to talk himself out of being witnessed having collapsed like the Jedi, being outed as a Force user would’ve been enough to bring far too much attention to him, far too many eyes from the Order when he was supposed to serve as the subtle knife, the consummate manipulator.

Now, none of that would come to pass. Sidious’s destiny lay broken at his feet, the Great Plan ruined by the sudden change in the Force.  As he thought of that change and began to consciously feel out the Force through the Dark Side, it almost made him hate the Force itself. How dare it change so much, how dare such a change do away with the Veil of the Dark Side through that Shift, as if it were but an afterthought?!

For indeed, that was the case. The change in the Force had torn apart the Veil. The construct of Sith Alchemy and Dark Side-assisted mathematical formulae that had been the culmination of centuries of work by the Sith Order, the thing that should’ve been his, that should have fueled his ascension… was gone.

Gone just like Sidious’s destiny. Just like all his hopes for the future, from killing Plagueis and becoming the sole Sith Lord to being the one to usher in the final, true victory of the Sith against the Jedi. Without the Veil, there was no way for the Grand Plan to succeed, for the Sith to hide their machinations from the thousands of Jedi across the galaxy, and that, even more than Moore’s reaction, had doomed the Great Plan.

And now here he was, surrounded by Jedi, surrounded by the hated enemy. Surrounded by targets for his hatred.

Four padawans died even as everyone turned towards the man, Sidious’s lightpike taking three of them in the back with a single long strike, before he stabbed a fourth through the head. Their lightsabers were tugged off of their belts, three of them sent hurling all around him as they came on, being desperately blocked by other younglings. The fourth, a blue lightsaber, slipped into his hand for a moment as he roared, “DIE, JEDI!!”

The feeling of Sidious’s hate now consciously directed outward impacted the Force even more than before, acting like a physical force on all of the padawans, who were already reeling. None of them had faced anything similar, and indeed even those Knights who had passed their Trials hadn’t faced something so strong. It weakened their Force Precognition, slowed their reaction times, and soon more fell to Sidious as he charged forward, the lightsabers of the dead rising around him, slicing and dicing under his direction, as if each one was in the hands of a Knight.

Among the crowd, only Obi-Wan was able to withstand that initial push along with two older Knights, both Consulars who had come to the battle late. One of them died as Palpatine flew through the air, faster and more accurately than any Jedi that any of them had ever seen outside perhaps the greatest of the Order’s duelists. The Knight desperately tried to block, but the lightsaber of his enemy slid past his riposte, slicing into his fingers, and then Sidious was past.

A backhand blow removed the man’s head before flicking around to block a blow from the second Knight, while Obi-Wan came in from the side, before shifting position up and over the man, his lightsaber lashing down. Obi-Wan found his attack blocked almost lazily parried by the man, then he was hurled away by a Force Push, slamming into the ceiling with enough force to nearly break ribs. A Force Crush then took the Knight in the chest, as Palpatine released his lightpike, the weapon joining the myriad other weapons spinning and flashing around him. 

The control of the man, Obi-Wan thought blearily.  Not even Master Yoda could keep so many lightsabers moving at once, each of them under so much control as to act like they were each being wielded by a person!

With a roar, Hrimiyarr attacked, now wielding twin blades, while more padawans and young Knights, slowly recovering, also pushed in, but the man laughed, blocking them all, dodging, slaying with his Force-controlled lightsabers, having the ability to not only direct each blade in turn, but also strike out with Force Pushes and Grabs.

“Die, die! I will kill you all. I will slaughter every Jedi in this temple!” he shouted, exulting in his hate and fury in a way he had never done before, nearly losing himself in the slaughter. “Then the Sith will rise, if not in secrecy than with blood and fury!”

The Temple Guards shifted away from Sly, rushing to attack him. This forced several of the padawans to turn to her, even as more of the awakened Jedi arrived. More young Knights, even, some of whom were Consulars who had been busy elsewhere on Coruscant or higher up in the temple helping. None of them, much to Aayla’s chagrin, had wanted to take over leading the temple, but were more than willing to help any other way they could.

One of whom, a Trandoshan Jedi Knight named Olo Bay, died instantly, followed by another, then a third as Sidious howled with madness and hatred. His presence in the Force was a wound, weakening all their Force Precognition as his own soared to new heights, and the seven lightsabers around him flashed and struck.

On any other given day, Sidious would’ve been a match for nearly any Jedi Master in the temple. His Force powers, his training in both armed and Force-based combat were sublime. Only true masters of combat could have faced him with any chance of victory. None of those had yet to recover, not Master Yoda, nor Masters Windu, Dooku, or anyone else.

Worse, Sidious’s anger and hatred for the Jedi were fueling his powers even more than normal. His strength, speed and reaction time made young knights and padawans alike look slow. More died, hurled away from him, others lost limbs to the flashing lightsabers that had essentially created an impenetrable barrier around him. Even a Master, the first to wake up in the temple itself, a youngling caretaker, found herself sliced into pieces. Her last attempt to protect her former charges amounted to nothing, just another victim as Sidious vaulted around the praxeum, his lightsabers all lashing out, seeking, striking.

Desperately, Obi-Wan tried to parry a blow, tried to center himself in the Force. This worked, and as four hovering lightsabers struck at him, Obi-Wan found himself sliding entirely into a defensive stance, shifting from his normal Ataru into the third form, Soresu.

For the first time, Sidious’s Juyo form, a form based on chaotic movements and aggressive use of his Force powers, was blocked, along with his telekinetic-based powers.

Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan’s master, had always focused on Ataru, which was the style he personally used. He had found himself unable to truly teach any other style, having shifted to Ataru from Shii-Cho early in his training under Master Dooku, whose own dismay at Qui-Gon’s lack of ability with the blade had shown through all too often in their training.

However, Obi-Wan had been given several years of lessons in the third form before becoming a padawan, and while Qui-Gon couldn't help him with it, he had never forced him to stop training in it on top of training in Ataru. Now, it was as if the final piece of a circuit had been set into place, allowing power to flow through a computer more smoothly. It felt right, almost natural in a way that acrobatics had never felt, and Obi-Wan’s Force powers shifted to match.

Sidious’s eyes narrowed, and he lashed out with a Force Push as two lightsabers slashed in from around the youth.  But Obi-Wan rooted himself in the ground, remaining there like a stone against the buffeting wind, his lightsaber twitching, blocking one strike then slicing, into one lightsaber hilt, then another, deactivating them in a welter of sparks.

A Force Grab was similarly blocked by his powers, and his lightsaber came up in a quick, economical block as a third lightsaber flicked in. Several more blocks, all economical, all flowing from one form to the next, battered aside still more floating lightsabers as Obi-Wan defended his allies.

Then Hrimiyarr shifted forward, his mind linking to Obi-Wan’s, the two creating a Force Gestalt. The three Temple Guards did the same, and at an unseen impulse, the other younglings and padawans pulled back, knowing that they would only get in the way.

However, this let Sly free. And even as she smacked aside the blades of several young padawans, she reached out. Still more lightsabers rose from the bodies of their owners. One was close enough to surprise a Temple Guard, stabbing him in the side and he fell, his Force Precognition no match for being near Sidious.

Seeing that, Obi-Wan, surprising himself, shouted, “Padawans, pull back! Force Pushes!” A bit of sophistry there, but I’ll allow it to myself just this once.

At that command, all of the younger padawans there, and even a few scattered younglings who had yet to be ushered away for whatever reason, desperate and frightened in a way that none of them had ever dealt with before, lashed out.

Their fear gave Sidious power, but not all of them was feeling it, and there were so many of them even Sidious couldn’t block the massed technique. The two Sith were hurled against the wall above the hallway leading to the penitent cells, and then Obi-Wan, Hrimiyarr, and the Temple Guardians charged forward, trying to take advantage of the opening along with several of the other padawans and the few remaining knights. Meanwhile, the rest of the padawans shifted to destroying the lightsabers that Sidious and Sly had been using.

Still, Sidious’s skills were too much, and within a second he had broken out of the Force Grab. More young Jedi began to fall as Sidious worked around Obi-Wan’s iron defense. With Sly nearby, he could devote still more of his mental faculties to his Force powers and he lashed out, pushing, tugging, crushing, and bodies fell, blood spattering the ground of the temple.

However, the padawans and the younglings started to surprise Sidious and Sly. One of them grabbed up some debris from where the wall had cracked under the impact of a body. Hurling it forward with the thought that he wanted them to go as fast as arrows, both he and the target, Sidious, was startled to see the bits of stone transform into so many stone arrows.

“What, what is that!?” Sidious growled, anger and intrigue audible in his voice even as he dodged the attack, his lightsaber threatening to bisect another Jedi youth, but being blocked by another young padawan.

“I, did I do that?” The padawan in question, more of an age with Aayla than Obi-Wan, stared at his hands, then grabbed several others. “Come on, like this!”

As he pushed what he had done out into their minds, the fivesome all raised their hands. Several bits of debris levitated into the air, where they transformed into needles, arrows and even a spear from a portion of a chopped tree, all of which were hurled forward at speed.

Now Sly had some trouble, with one of the spears taking her ear off, and several of the arrows nicking the sides of her neck and arms, but not doing enough damage. Sidious simply snarled and lashed out with a bolt of Force Crush. One of the Temple Guard interrupted his attempt, his lightpike nearly taking Sidious’s leg off.

He twitched away in time, but as Obi-Wan blocked Sidious’s retaliatory strike, Sly’s hit home, stabbing the Temple Guard through the chest.

Sidious’s next Force Push got through and hurled that group of younglings and padawans away. Two died as they struck the opposite wall, their necks snapping with the impact. The others cried out in pain, but it nearly cost Sidious, as the Wookiee padawan’s furious lightsaber smashed two of his whirling lightsabers out of the air before Hrimiyarr’s next blow nearly caught him in the side.

Yet even as Sidious drove them all back once more, forcing the younglings and padawans into a purely defensive stance, those still in the praxeum looked at one another. Their faces firmed, and in groups around the area, they reached for the Force in separate, small Gestalts.

 Aayla, on the other hand, quailed as she watched another newly awakened Knight falling to this, this monster. It was like watching a group of toddlers fight the Grand Master, only the Grand Master wasn’t playing. He was trying to kill them all.

Still, Aayla was about to reactivate her lightsabers and join the fight when a hand grabbed her shoulder. She looked around and turned, staring into the wide, distraught eyes of Barriss. “No! You can’t, we, we’re not, even with what the others are planning…”

Her voice trailed off as the ground beneath the two Dark Side users rose, trying to entrap them, the stone of the Temple flowing like water. A large group of padawans and younglings gasped and fell unconscious from doing whatever they had, but it didn’t work.

Sidious just grabbed Sly and leaped upward and away, lashing down with a Force Push that smashed into several other groups of younglings with enough force to shatter bones, he crowed, “Your younglings fight better than you do, fools! They will make excellent Sith, those that survive!”

“We’re not going to win, not like this,” Barriss nearly whimpered, but her hand on Aayla’s shoulder showed no sign of releasing.

“What would you have us do?! We can’t let them escape either!” While that honestly would probably be a better plan than continuing to try to fight the two Sith and get slaughtered, Aayla doubted that, given the man’s shouting rantings, either of them were in the mood to run away. Not now, when the Order’s weakness was laid bare in the blood of the young and still-learning all around them. Bodies were now everywhere across the area, twenty or more, knights, padawans, and older initiates alike.

If only Master Ti or one of the other Masters had arrived! We might have had a better chance here. Unfortunately, even Giiett, Saa and Tholme were still a day away.

“If we can’t keep him on this floor, he’ll just start slaughtering the unconscious Jedi everywhere,” Aayla concluded, horror beginning to fill her at the disaster she could all too easily envision.  There were still several thousand Jedi in the Temple who had yet to stir, which wasn’t even including the children and their minders on this very floor.

“I know, but we can’t fight him like this. We need, we need to wake some of them up! Your empathy, it might, if we work together maybe…” Barriss stammered, trying to put together a plan, the Force trying to help her through it as a spark of instinct screamed at her.

Aayla frowned, then turned, seeing the roiling Dark Side energies almost like a giant tentacled monster around the senator, the hidden Sith. He can be nothing else! Aayla watched as his Force power reached towards a youngling behind one of the Jedi fighting. He grabbed his foot, pulling him forward into the fighter in front of him, the strike taking his attention away for a lethal moment as a lightsaber flashed in from above Sidious’s form.

Obi-Wan’s desperate attempt to deflect nearly cost Obi-Wan his own life as Sidious directed another floating lightsaber in towards him, but Hrimiyarr blocked the blow at the last second, only for Sly Moore to cut down another padawan. She nearly fell a moment later as another rain of spears struck, but Sidious smashed them out of the sky with a powerful Force Push, and then leaped away, cutting down another pair of younglings personally before Obi-Wan and the others could follow. “Hahahah, sending children to their deaths, what else would I expect from the Jedi?!”

Seeing that and knowing her young friend’s words were all too accurate, Aayla nodded.  “Come on, then.” The two raced away, heading up higher into the temple.  “What are you thinking?”

“None of us have the skill to beat that monster, so we have to force some of the Masters to wake up. It’s risky, and might hurt them and us, but it’s better than nothing,” Barriss explained, the plan still coming together in her mind even as she grabbed several youngsters who had remained hidden in the stairwell, listening to the conflict, unable or unwilling to just retreat higher into the temple. “Come on, all of you. We’re going to get some help!”

Master Yoda and many of the other Masters who had been in the temple when the Shift occurred had all been placed on the same floor, the one used by the High Council and the Council of First Knowledge. Those rooms were incredibly crowded, as was most of the temple, with so many comatose Jedi being brought home to join the several hundred who were always in the temple along with the training clans. Indeed, the temple was more packed than it had ever been, as far as the records Stavos so loved told them.

Aayla grimaced as that thought hit her, then wiped it away. Stavos had been one of the first padawans cut down by Palpatine when he woke, having been in the Presidium when events began. She would need to deal with that and Urdo’s death later. Urdo had died moments ago. Aayla had felt his passing as they raced up here, the young man with the caring personality and ease with children having tried and failed to join the battle below.

“A, alright, so, um, first, everyone connect to the Force. R, reach out to me and Barriss,” Aayla stammered before breathing in, centering herself. “I’m going to need your power, while Barriss is going to reach out to the minds of the Jedi Masters and try to, well, open them up to hear me.”

This was based on a Force technique to wake and heal the mind of those who had fallen unconscious due to physical damage done to the brain. Barriss, as a youngling, hadn’t learned anything to do with damage done by mental attacks yet, but it was the only thing she could do right now, just like asking Aayla for help.

Barris hoped that, combined, the two techniques would punch through the fog of the changes to the connection with the Force that had done so much inner damage to the minds of the unconscious Jedi. Most of that damage had healed by this point in the majority, but they remained asleep, their psyches still dealing with the impact.

All those who knew how to link to one another reached out to the Force, joining Aayla, kneeling in among the cots and beds currently housing the older members of the order. Then Barriss reached out to Aayla, and Aayla, in turn, began to broadcast down the link Barriss had created.

Fear, hopelessness, a plea for help. She pushed it all out, pushed it all into the minds of the unconscious members all around her. PLEASE, we need you!

Some of them didn’t respond. Cin Drallig, the leader of the Temple Guard, barely twitched. Most of the teachers didn’t even move, and Jocasta Nu might as well have been a corpse.  Others did stir but didn’t wake up. Their minds were slowly dealing with the changes. A few minds started to react, before falling back into unconsciousness, not quite there yet. Yoda, Rancisis and Yaddle were all in this group.

But some, some did react. Some had been on the cusp of waking up, and now jolted upright, the desperation and hopelessness of Aayla’s emotion-based message acting like a spear through a wall of paper, startling them all awake.

Quinlan was the first. Feeling Aayla’s desperation, knowing her mind and presence through the Force so well, he instantly responded, his eyes snapping open, sitting upright abruptly, his hand grabbing for his lightsaber, eyes flicking around for enemies, his teeth bared as the Kiffar looked for danger.  Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan’s master, and Master Plo Koon, a Kel Dor member of the High Council, also awoke.

Plo Koon had a strong sense of justice and a desire to help people, and feeling so many minds crying out was the final straw his psyche needed to push through the impact he had felt from The Shift in the Force.  Qui-Gon, in contrast, was a proponent of the Living Force philosophy. He lived in the now, shifting as the Force willed him from one moment to the next, and because of that, Qui-Gon had been the closest one to waking naturally. Indeed, his remaining comatose for so long was a surprise to his padawan.

There was one other, however, whose awakening was somewhat more of a surprise. Master Dooku stirred, his senses flaring, pushing past the sudden confusion about where he was and what had happened, sensing Dark Side energies from the first floor of the temple.

Anyone who knew him as a padawan or even a Knight wouldn’t have called Dooku very flexible in his thinking, yet that had been years ago. Since then, his arrogance had led Dooku into several errors of judgment. He had thus begun to be a proponent of the idea that the whole Order had to grow and change, to shift away from the Senate and even the Republic as a whole. He had become more flexible, more willing to look for alternate sources of knowledge, and that had, in turn, shaped how The Shift affected his mind.

Sitting upright in bed, Dooku looked around, nodding to Qui-Gon, mentally making a note to talk to his first padawan later, then frowned at the young Kiffar Jedi, reaching out and grabbing him by the shoulder as he stood up. “Calmly, young man! There is far too much anger in you at the moment. Whoever is below will use that against you. Center yourself, or fighting the Sith will be enough to push you over the edge.”

Quinlan bared his teeth, but as Aayla reached over and took his hand, closed his eyes and began to do so. “S- sith?”  

Quinlan had always fought with his inner anger, his inner darkness. His Kiffar powers, the powers of psychomancy, had always made him see too much. Now, having been woken up by feeling his padawan’s fear, horror and growing despair, was it any wonder that he had nearly lost himself to his own anger?

“Indeed. Someone as powerful as what I am sensing can only be a Sith, one who has been trained from the moment he awoke to the Force in the Dark Side. No Dark Jedi could match that mix of power and control. And as such, feeling anger yourself would be the worst thing possible. It would power him, and he could even turn you against us. Such has happened in the past,” Plo agreed as he stood up, making certain his body was no worse for wear for his possibly extended stay in bed.

Hearing that, and under the gaze of the three Masters, Quinlan pulled himself together. As he did, he slowly shook his head, feeling the absence of the Veil of the Dark Side, which had begun to cloud the vision of the Jedi around the time he began training, as well as how reactive and almost… alive wasn’t quite the right term, but the Force felt more chaotic, far less certain. Not in a bad way, though, more like… well, later for introspection and meditation. We have an enemy to fight. “Your pardon, Masters. I will meditate on this later, but we need to move.”

“We do. But I will demand that you stay here in the Temple for a time, young man. Your first emotion should not have been fury upon waking, even when waking to the threat to your padawan.” At that, Dooku allowed himself a smile. He too had been feeling out the Force, the changes in it, which astonished and intrigued him alike. “You could say that was the wrong emotion, right action, so to speak.”

With that, and before Qui-Gon could stare at his old master for actually attempting to do a joke for too long, Dooku was up and moving with Plo Koon beside him. With a start, the two younger Jedi raced after them, heading down the steps to the lower floors.

What they found was chaos. Obi-Wan, Hrimiyarr and a young Knight named Bultar Swan still stood with the sole Temple Guard still fighting, but five more padawans and two more Knights had joined Sidious’s other victims. Sly Moore had accounted for three other padawans and a handful of younglings had collapsed from their exertions, blood dripping from noses and ears from their efforts.

Bodies were literally strewn everywhere across the large gathering hall, and several trees had been shattered by Sidious and used as weapons or cut down by the passage of the fighting.

But that wasn’t the only change. The small groups of younglings had been bolstered by still more. Shodarr stayed back from the fighting, directing them in small groups and then ordering each group to retreat deeper into the temple whenever the younglings tired themselves out. Under their direction, the very ground had shifted in places, cracking here and shifting upward into spikes or hands there. Other spikes stabbed out from the walls and ceiling. Tiny needles, strange stone spears, and more transfigured material lay everywhere, and there were even a few signs of fire and ice.

It made for a very strange, and incredibly horrifying, image to the Jedi Masters, who instantly lit their lightsabers and charged toward the center of the room, where Palpatine and Sly Moore still stood.

Dooku moved first, fast, faster than anyone there had ever seen, slicing three lightsabers out of the air almost negligently before blocking Sidious’s own lightsaber as he struck at Hrimiyarr, then forced him back in a series of slashes, thrusts and small, controlled movements, twirling in place to keep up with Sidious’s own speed and the various lightsabers still flashing around him in midair. Every move Dooku made was economical, controlled, pointed and direct, showing a mastery of the lightsaber that none of Sidious’s enemies, not even Obi-Wan, who took to Soresu like a duck to water, could match, and for the first time, Sidious couldn’t concentrate on his Force powers, forced to defend himself physically, his presence making no difference to Dooku’s Force Precognition.

Within seconds, Dooku had broken Sidious and Sly’s defenses, forcing them a few steps apart, and then Plo Koon, Qui-Gon and Quinlan arrived. Plo Koon shifted in to attack Sidious, while the other two Masters attacked Sly, pushing her away quickly, before Qui-Gon twisted around, launching himself towards Sidious to join the battle against him as they sensed Sidious getting used to Dooku and Plo Koon’s sudden presence.

Neither of the senior Masters had ever fought alongside one another, and they found a Force Gestalt difficult to form because of that and the strange wild nature of the Force as it was now. However, Qui-Gon had fought alongside Dooku on uncounted occasions, and the two of them easily reconnected now, despite the lingering issues between them.

Similarly, while Plo Koon and Qui-Gon hadn’t fought alongside one another, they had talked and even debated several points of law occasionally. While they couldn’t work nearly as seamlessly as the former padawan/master pair, their styles complimented one another, Djem So with Ataru.  Dooku provided the accuracy and control, Qui-Gon the movement, Plo Koon the power, and combined, they pushed Sidious to the utmost, blocking his Force techniques and slowly cutting down the various lightsabers around him even as Force Crushes, Pushes, Grabs, and even wholly new techniques were blocked or deflected.

Exhausted, Hrimiyarr and many of the other padawans pulled back, letting Quinlan fight with Obi-Wan and the Temple Guard against Sly, both the Temple Guard and Obi-Wan finding a second wind.

While the others drove Sidious further back and away from her, Sly was quickly overcome. Soon, a strike from Quinlan got through her defenses, removing her hand, and Obi-Wan’s lightsaber took her in the side, nearly cutting Sly in half.

However, Sidious was a very different kettle of fish. He was still going strong, still filled with the Dark Side, and he had picked up several new tricks from watching the young Jedi. For several moments it looked like the new trio had the advantage as he lost more of his Force-directed lightsabers, but then a brief surge of the Force into the floor created a dagger-like spike that stabbed upwards, catching Plo through the foot, holding him in place for a second even as the pain did nothing to Plo Koon’s self-control.

This lack of movement, though, broke his ability to work with the other two, and even as Sidious battered aside a blow from Dooku, he reached out, picking up and hurling yet another lightsaber towards Plo Koon from barely an inch away, the blade activating as it was in the air.

Plo Koon’s eyes widened, and he desperately brought up his lightsaber, but suddenly the Force shifted and a shield of energy appeared, blocking the lightsaber.

It came from Shodarr. Her entire body gleaming with yellow energy, she shouted, “You won’t hurt him! You won’t hurt anyone anymore!”

Seeing that, an energy shield created by the Force caused Sidious to hesitate for just a second too long. Dooku’s strike battered the lightsaber in his hand just a bit out of position, and before he could recover, the return strike removed Sidious’s forearm.

“ARGH!” Sidious’s lightsaber, the same one he’d had in his hand the whole battle and only rarely needed to use before the trio of Masters arrived, fell to the ground as Sidious stumbled, howling in pain and fury. But even now, he wasn’t done.  That pain, that fury fueled him still more, and Sith Lightning lashed out from his body in every direction. So much so, it looked like a whole storm had descended, lashing out at the Jedi.

Dooku barely got his lightsaber up in time, and Qui-Gon howled as the lightning danced across his body until Obi-Wan was able to interpose his own body and lightsaber between the assault and his Master.  His lightsaber deflected the lightning into the ground even as he winced.

Yet the shield that Shodarr had created somehow was the main defense from the lightning for Plo Koon and those behind him. Seeing that, other younglings shouted, thrusting hands outward, instinctively linking their minds to Shodarr as they had several times during the battle. Others even came back from where they had retreated down the various hallways leading off the Presidium. The shield expanded, creating a bubble around Sidious and their seniors, blocking the lightning, absorbing every strike that hit it.

Redirecting the lightning coming towards them up into that shield, Dooku reached out with the Force, pulling the same lightsaber that Sidious had been using previously towards his other hand. He wasn’t very much a proponent of Jar’Kai, but in extremis, he would use any weapon he could.

He then lashed out, whirling into a series of strikes, one sword blocking the lightning, the other lashing out towards Sidious. Sidious’s Force Lightning assault broke off, and another lightsaber from a dead Jedi whirled into his remaining hand, which he used to block the next two strikes from Dooku.

Dooku dropped his second lightsaber to the ground, as soon as the lightning ended. He pushed Sidious back hard, Makashi against the Sith’s Juyo as Sidious once more lost all ability to concentrate on his preferred Force power-heavy combat style.

The two of them fought for several moments, then as the Dark Side tried to blare a warning, once more Sidious was just a little too slow. Instead of going for a strike that he was certain he would get through Dooku’s defenses, he pulled back, but too slowly. A recovered Plo Koon’s blow hit his arm, cutting it off at the elbow, and then Dooku’s lightsaber stabbed, taking Palpatine in the throat.

Sidious fell, dead, and as he did, the Force practically exploded, the Dark Side energies in him bursting out, pushing Dooku and Plo back.

The future had just changed fundamentally. So many possibilities, so many futures, so much that would have happened could no longer, so much so that the cutting of those strings of possibilities resounded back to the moment where that initial string had been cut, causing a reverberation that all of the Jedi there felt. At the same time, a gleeful, clear clarion sound came as the Light side of the Force rejoiced.

For a moment, as the storm of Dark Side energies passed, Dooku and Plo Koon stood, staring at one another for a few moments over the body of their enemy. Then Dooku flicked his lightsaber up into a formal salute, which Plo Koon returned, before both men turned their lightsabers off, shifting their attention to the carnage around them.

There would be a lot of questions, a lot of mysteries that needed to be cleared up about this Sith Lord, about what his hiding inside the Senate meant. But that would be for later. They had wounded and the Order to see to now.

OOOOOOO

Late that night, after spending most of the remaining evening with her Master, Aayla, Quinlan himself, Obi-Wan, Hrimiyarr, and Shodarr were summoned up to the high Council chamber. That summoning almost acted like a balm to Aayla, a sign that things were going to change back to normal in a lot of ways. That a lot of the burden that had been on her and the others would be removed, taken up by more deserving shoulders ahead of even Master Tholme’s arrival.

Master Plo Koon and the others had also allowed them time to mourn. The two Sith had killed seven Knights, forty-eight padawans and eighteen initiates, on top of crippling nearly as many younglings and padawans before their rampage had been stopped.

It would’ve been far worse without Barriss’s desperate plan, but that was scant comfort, and Aayla still felt drained from it all as she walked beside her Master into the Temple’s High Council chamber. Barriss was still unconscious from her efforts, while Aayla could barely reach out to the Force, her mind felt so raw and drained.

Master Plo Koon sat in his normal council seat, the only one of the three Masters there who would normally be part of the Council. Qui-Gon sat as well, while Dooku stood, staring out over the view from one of the windows, his back to the door at present. As they entered, Master Vos left Aayla’s side for a moment, shifting ahead to take a seat on the floor rather than in one of the Council seats. Whatever happened, he was certainly not going to be in charge of anything, a sight that made Aayla both smile in relief and have to hold back a burst of giggles.

At a gesture from Master Plo, they all walked forward, and Dooku began to speak, still staring out into the night of Coruscant. “At one point, not too long ago, I had been beset by anger and fear. Fear that the Order that I had devoted myself to had stagnated. That we Jedi had become too hidebound to change, too staid to react, despite knowing that there was more to learn about the Force, and the darkness encroaching ever more into our connection to it. The Shift is an opportunity before us, and the Order, to change.”

“But we wouldn’t be able to seize that opportunity, to change like that, if not for all of you and the work you have done since the Shift afflicted all of us.” With that, Dooku turned, striding through the chairs of the high Council, then knelt in front of the padawans, bowing his head. Not once, but to each of them in turn, as Plo, Quinlan and Qui-Gon all bowed their own heads. “Thank you. Thank you for your loyalty, for your hard work and your flexibility.”

“Without the work you all put in, even setting aside the issue of the two Sith, the Order would be in no position to push forward on our own terms. We would instead be further roped into the whims of others, dancing to their tune rather than that of the Force itself,” Qui-Gon said, adding his own words to those of his former master, happiness and pride radiating from him as he looked at Obi-Wan.

There were still some things for Qui-Gon and Dooku to work through, and some guilt and worry in Dooku that Qui-Gon wanted to get to the bottom of, but in this, they agreed. The Jedi Order needed to serve the Force, and through it the people, not the Senate.

“You have taken on burdens that no padawan let alone a youngling, should ever face.” Behind his gas mask, Plo smiled at Aayla, then the others in the room. “Thank you for your courage, your strength and sense of justice and order. You all are exemplars of what the Jedi Order should aspire to be.”

Quinlan also felt proud of Aayla’s role in everything. Now he beamed at her like a proud parent, making her flush and look away.

“Many of the Masters who have yet to wake might have issues with how you have done things, with the fact that you did take on this burden, but they were not there. They were not faced with the choices you had to face. When that time comes, hold your heads up high, young ones,” Qui-Gon finished.

Straightening, Dooku shifted to his feet, then settled down into one of the chairs, gesturing, to Aayla’s surprise, to herself and the others to do likewise. Sensing that, Dooku smiled. “Adaptability will be paramount in the following days. The Force has changed. What we can do with it has changed likewise. Our training, our education, our understanding of the Force must change to match it, even once everyone else is awake. And until they are, none of us will try to shunt you aside, to push you back into the role of padawan or youngling, unless that is what you wish.”

“I can sense that within you: the hope to return to what you had once been. I will not fight it. Nor will any here censor you for feeling grief and sadness at this day’s events so long as you do not let it consume you,” Plo added. “Release it into the Force, leaving only the feelings of those positive moments you shared with the dead behind, and you will get through this all the stronger.”

“We will all talk you through that, walk you and everyone else here in small groups through how to do that, how to feel about… what happened today. But that is for the future. Right now, tell us your thoughts on everything. Tell us what plans you made for the future, about what is going on in the galaxy as a whole through your eyes.” Qui-Gon said, glancing at his master. “We are, none of us, too old to learn, after all.”

This took several hours, even with the younglings summarizing as much as they could. When they were done, and the trio of Masters had finished asking questions, mostly about the Senate, the temple’s own organization and a few missions like the one the teens had thought to assign to Shaak Ti, the youngsters were sent to bed. Only Aayla remained at a gesture from her master.

Plo looked at the pair of them for a moment, then stated, “Do you think that the two of you could find Master Tholme?”

“I know what planet he’s on, Master, if that’s what you’re saying. He passed that to me via a code that Master Vos taught me. Finding him on that planet is going to be a different story, though,” Aayla said, tugging at one of her tentacles thoughtfully, fighting back a yawn. “But why would we?  He’s due to arrive here soon.”

“I can find him from there,” Quinlan agreed, resting a hand on Aayla’s shoulder, something he had done several times during the tale of the past few days to show his appreciation of her as she and the others told Plo and the rest what was going on. “But I agree with my padawan. If Tholme said he would be coming back to the temple, what would be the point?”

“We don’t want him to,” Qui-Gon interjected firmly.

“The last time the Order had even a hint that Sith had survived the New Sith Wars, it was barely anything, a rumor of a Jedi who died on a mission in Hutt space, a phrase passed onto other Jedi,” Plo said, leaning back slightly in his chair and tapping his metal-clad fingers together. “Two Sith, Master and padawan, was the rumor. One master to control the knowledge, an apprentice to gain it and usurp the title. A logical way to pass on their lore, their hate, and not be discovered by the Jedi by having too many members, or too many voices directing the Sith in ways that could attract our attention.”

“So what’s the problem?” Aayla asked, perhaps a bit querulously, a shudder going through her as the memory of Palpatine’s face flashed through her mind. “There was a Master and a student right here…”

“Perhaps, but the woman, Sly Moore, she was in no way a real, trained Sith, judging by the stories of how she fought before we were awakened. And given her age and how long she had been with Palpatine, she should have been,” Plo explained. “Many of those who fought her reported her fear, not her hatred or anger, and she had little to no impact on their Force Precognition after the initial clash.”

“Moreover, having the two be in the same place so often as a Senator and his aide would be strange. The Sith have been careful, exceedingly so. Why then would Moore and Palpatine be so closely connected in their civilian persona? If they were the only Sith, that would be foolish.” Dooku shook his head.

“So… you, you think Palpatine was, was the apprentice?” Aayla said, trying hard to keep her emotions in check.

Dooku shook his head firmly, not commenting on how close Aayla was to losing her composure. “No, he was clearly a Master. What Sly Moore was is, is what we do not understand. The real apprentice is out there somewhere. Perhaps able to act on his own, but certainly enough to perpetuate the Sith. That apprentice is who must be found. Before, hopefully, he can start reacting to the loss of his Master.”

“The death of a Senator, especially coupled with so many of our own dying, is not something we will be able to hide for long,” Plo Koon added. “Indeed, even trying might be the worst thing we could do, given what occurred, and the Senate’s own reaction to events here, which we will need to monitor closely.  Palpatine was not placed within the Senate for no reason.  We will need to discover the depths of the Sith’s machinations there.”

“So you want the Shadows to search for this real apprentice,” Quinlan mused. “While the Order looks into Palpatine and Moore?”

“Indeed. We will be going through everything the pair have touched; everyone they might have influenced. Bank accounts, anything they owned, planets they visited frequently, Palpatine’s estate on Naboo and here in the Senate district. All of it,” Plo agreed.

“I see.” Quinlan nodded, looking over at Aayla. “But we can wait a few days, surely?”

‘You need to let Aayla recover, obviously, but you need to do that on your way to wherever Tholme is,” Dooku shrugged apologetically. “It isn’t perfect, but this is not a perfect universe we live in. Nor do I want the pair of you to take this mission on your own. Even as deficient as her lightsaber style was, Sly Moore’s ability with the Force was a match for too many of the Jedi she faced. A true apprentice, a Sith specializing in combat? No, that would be far worse.”

Aayla and her Master nodded, and after a few more minutes of back and forth with Qui-Gon and Plo, they were dismissed to get some rest, a team having been chosen to go with them. This left the three acting members of the Council sitting there for a moment.

Then Dooku said the words they were all, in varying degrees of reluctance, thinking. “I was right all along, if not for the reasons I feared. The Order has become too complacent. Without The Shift, would we have ever discovered Palpatine was a Sith? I know I would not have. The man and I interacted several times while I met with various Senators and committees in the past two years. I had no idea. He was just an up-and-coming Senator, with some ideas I now find too intriguing, looking back. That was all. How much worse would it be if he had time to create a larger power base, to influence the Senate and, through it, the Republic?”

“Agreed. Whatever caused The Shift, this was a happy by-product. We cannot fall back into complacency. But we must also discover how the Force itself has changed,” Plo pointed out.

“And we must remove ourselves further from Senate control,” Qui-Gon stated firmly, if somewhat reluctantly. That reluctance, though, came from his dislike of politics rather than anything else. Indeed, like his Master, he had several thoughts in this direction before this. “The padawans pointed it out with that one Yim’rii/Khaleesh mission, but that is just one instance of many. A lot of the missions we’ve been sent on have sent us in with faulty or just wrong information. We need to start being more independent at every level.”

Plo hesitated, taking a glance at Dooku’s rigid profile, knowing he had an axe to grind on that score, but eventually nodded. “There is evidence the Senate has been manipulating the information, yes. If we have become simple voices for those in power, that is not justice. If we have become complacent, believing everything the Senate tells us, that is willful blindness. I will not be a party to being simply a force for the Senate and its special interest groups.”

“In that case, I suggest we start working on a plan. Four of them, really. One for the Order as a whole, outlining how we can become more independent. A second to learn more about how the Force has changed, and how our interaction with it and our training needs to change. A third to deal with the Senate. And fourth…” A thin smile appeared on Dooku’s face as he continued. “A plan to convince Master Yoda and the others of the necessity for it. Which is going to be an interesting experience, to be sure.”

End Chapter