Title: What Planet Are We On Again?
Author: djcati
Fandom: Star Wars OT / Harry Potter (crossover)
Characters: Too many.
Rating: PG
Notes: In this obviously-AU HP world, the SW OT wasn't released, but the prequel trilogy was, just ten years earlier than IRL. (stabs continuity with a spork)
Hey everyone! There aren't really three new chapters on this - sorry. I just realised that the original chapter was incredibly long, so I've split it into three parts. Fourth chapter's all new, though!
Enjoy:)
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Han Solo was afraid. He knew he was in trouble this time; had been in trouble enough to recognise that. But before, it had never seemed real - this time, it was very real. Very real indeed, and there was no hope this time, no odds to be defied. This was it; this was the end of his life, and he knew it.
"I love you," the Princess called out suddenly, and Han gritted his teeth so he wouldn't cry. She loved him. Leia Organa loved him.
Say it back, you fool, his brain was insisting, before you die.
"I know."
His brain did the equivalent of slapping its forehead, shrugging and turning away. Smooth. Yeah, she'll really go for that.
But it was too late to say anything else, as the platform sunk lower and lower into the pit of freezing, carbonite death.
Luke Skywalker swayed from side to side as he balanced on one hand, using the Force to keep himself upright and slowly spin rocks around him. He really was doing rather well, he thought, and so he reached out to pick up his droid as well - and in that instant, lost his concentration and fell over, head first and splat into the swamp mud. Artoo Detoo blatted at him, in a tone obviously meant to convey amusement.
"More attention, you must pay, young Skywalker. Failure like this, welcome it is not."
Yoda's chiding voice grated on Luke's ears, and he frowned. "I... saw something."
Yeah, mud, Artoo's beeping translated to, and Luke shook his head, even as he wondered how he knew that. He really was hanging around the droid too much.
"A vision?" Yoda asked, disdain evident in his voice.
"Han, and Leia... in danger." Mostly Han, he added to himself, rolling his eyes.
"In motion, the future always is. Concentrate on training, now, you must," Yoda told him dismissively.
"No... this was real. They're in danger. I have to go!"
Yoda stared at him for a moment, and Luke self-consciously wiped the mud from his face. "Hmph," the Jedi Master decided, turning away. "No. Now, to the cave, we are heading."
"What?" Luke scrambled to his feet and followed Yoda, wondering how the little alien could move so fast when he wanted to. "But I have to go! And I went in there yesterday."
Yoda stopped suddenly, and Luke almost fell over him. "Failed, you did, young Skywalker. Again, you must try." Mysteriously, Yoda glanced knowingly at a blank spot in the swamp. "Important plot point, it is."
What? "Um... OK, Master, if you say so." Luke shrugged, checked to make sure his lightsaber was clipped to his belt, and stepped towards the cave. He drew to a halt just outside it and breathed in deeply. Maybe this time, he should leave his lightsaber... Nah. Might need it again.
"Foolish boy," Yoda muttered behind him, and Luke indignantly took another step forward, disappearing into the mist of the cave.
Beeping curiously, Artoo trundled towards the cave, turning his photoreceptor to regard Yoda with clear disapproval. Raising his stick, Yoda hit the droid, and then beckoned him towards the cave. "In we must go, old droid. Follow me."
Old? You're one to talk.
"Quiet you should be, or memory wipe I shall put you in for. Want one of those, you do not, hmm?"
Artoo blatted rudely and rolled into the cave ahead of Yoda. Chuckling softly, the Jedi master followed them in, wondering to himself if this story was really worth all the insistent plot points.
Han thought about opening his eyes, and decided against it. He wasn't quite sure what was going on now, except that he felt decidedly too warm to be frozen in carbonite. In fact, if he was as stupid as he pretended to be, he might have thought he was lying in a fireplace, except that it wasn't burning him, and he wasn't sure what a fireplace was anyway.
"Who is it?" a hushed voice was asking.
"I don't know," a bossy female voice replied, "but he shouldn't be here. It's quite impossible."
"Why is it impossible?" a softer, yet more insistent voice asked.
The female sighed exasperatedly. "Because if I've told you once I've told you a hundred times - it's impossible to get in and out of this castle without permission."
Castle? Han's brain asked him. Where are we, Hapes? Force, no, anything but Hapes. Please don't be Hapes.
"Maybe he has permission," the first voice - a boy, Han decided, now that his ears were hearing more clearly - suggested.
The female scoffed. "Him? He'd need permission from Dumbledore, or McGonagall at least. And even if he did, why would he be in Gryffindor's fireplace? No, this is quite impossible, and therefore, he's not really here."
Han liked that logic. If it was impossible, and he wasn't here, then he could just go to sleep and wake up back on his ship, couldn't he?
"Hermione, it's obvious he's here. We just need to work out how and why."
"Hmph. Well, I don't like it."
Han decided that it obviously wasn't going to work, and he needed to open his eyes and find out where he was. He slowly did so, and realised, with only a little shock, that he was indeed in a fireplace. With green flames. Never mind. "Uh, guys," he tried, coughed to get the ash out of his throat, and tried again. "Guys, do I get a say in this?"
"Oh, he's alive?" The first boy's voice sounded disappointed. "I suppose we can ask him, now."
Han looked up out of the flames to see who, exactly, the three were. Children, he saw immediately, or teenagers anyway, about fifteen or so. There were two boys and a girl, all extremely strange-looking, and as he studied them closer, the second boy - black-haired and green-eyed, with a strange scar on his forehead - reached out and pulled him out of the fire and to his feet. "Thanks," Han coughed.
"No problem." The boy paused, then indicated himself and his friends. "I'm Harry Potter, this is Hermione Granger, and this-" He pointed to the red-haired boy, still crouched on the floor, studying the embers of the burnt-out fire intently. "-is Ron Weasley."
Han nodded, wondered why, then shook his head. "Great. I'm Han Solo. Where the hell am I?"
The girl stared up at him, frowning. "You don't know?"
"Oh, sure, I'm just asking you to be annoying."
"This," the girl continued, "is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. What are you doing here, if you don't know that?"
"Like I know." Han frowned suddenly. "Wizardry. Don't tell me you guys are Jedi Knights as well? I've had enough of that to last a lifetime..."
Harry glanced at his friends, then back at Han. "Uh, no, we're wizards. And a witch," he added, indicating Hermione.
"Wizards and witches." Han laughed. "What, like the fairy tales? With spells and magic wands, like a holoshow or something?"
His laughter died instantly as all three children nodded and help up thin wooden sticks - magic wands, he realised. His eyes widened. "Blast, you guys are wizards. What planet is this?"
"Earth," said Hermione, as if he really should have known. "Did you hit your head when you landed in the fireplace?"
"Obviously," Han answered, finally turning his gaze on the rest of this room. He'd never heard of a planet Earth before. Maybe it was in the Unknown Regions. Was he in Chiss space or something? That couldn't be good. But this whole wizardry thing sounded just like something some crazy Imperial type would think up to fight Jedi, and Han thought the whole thing stank of Thrawn or Fel.
A second passed before he remembered that he didn't actually know who either Thrawn or Fel was yet. But it sure stank of them anyway.
"You say this is a school?" He directed the question to the bossy girl as he finished his examination of the room - far too grand and expensive-looking, he thought, pulling a face at the portraits on the wall. Definitely Thrawn.
"Yes," Hermioned answered, irritated. "Hogwarts. It's the most famous wizarding school in the world," she added proudly, fixing Han with an even more suspicious stare.
"Only in the wizarding world," Harry amended. "He's probably a Muggle," he suggested to his friends. "And he's from America - maybe Hogwarts isn't that well-known over there anyway."
"America?" What kind of name was that for a planet? "I'm from Corellia," he told them. At their blank stares, he added, "You know, one of the most famous planets in the galaxy?" Sithspit, this was the Outer Rim. Was this another Adumar?
He didn't know what Adumar was yet either, so he ignored his inner monologue once again.
"The galaxy?" Harry laughed nervously. "This is just one planet, mate."
The red-haired boy - Ron? - scrunched his face up in confusion. "You're not an alien, are you?"
"Um, no, I'm human." Han frowned for a second. "I guess I count as an alien on this planet." He looked round the room again, exasperated. "Look, guys, is there something, I don't know, that I can shoot or eat or insult around here? This conversation's getting too surreal."
Ron brightened visibly. "You just hang on a sec, and I'll go get Malfoy."
Harry grabbed the back of his friend's awful purple jumper as he turned towards the door, and Ron sighed. "All right," he conceded, brushing Harry's hand away irritably.
Hermione hmphed again, said, "Well, I'm going to go and find Professor McGonagall," and spun to face the door. She stalked off, and Han heard a sleepy, irritated voice scolding her as she left via a strangely circular exit.
He raised an eyebrow, half amused, half confused, half irritated at the author's use of rhyming and bad maths in one sentence, and turned back to Harry and Ron. "Who stuck a lightsaber up her butt?"
Ron snickered and Harry hit him on the shoulder. "She just wants to get this situation resolved," Harry said vaguely, shooting a warning glance at his friend. "We still don't know why you're here, after all."
"Yeah, I want to find that out, too." Han shrugged and walked past the two boys to collapse in one of the too-comfortable chairs. "Last I knew, I was dead. Or in hybernation, I'm not sure which," he admitted.
"Are you really from another planet?" Ron asked curiously, dropping into the seat opposite Han. Harry sat on the mismatched couch between the two armchairs, taking off his glasses and wiping at them idly.
"Yeah. Don't happen to have any starships round here, do you?" Han yawned suddenly, and scowled at his tiredness. Stupid Imperials - why did keeping prisoners awake have to be part of the torture routine? Weren't those stupid machines enough? "I could really do with getting to the rendezvous point right about now. I think we're about a week late." And he would have to find Luke, too, and get the damned kid to help rescue Leia and Chewie. Why did he always have to rescue someone?
"Starships?" Ron's eyes were wide. "What's that?"
Harry narrowed his eyes cynically at Han as he put his glasses back on. "You don't mean like in Star Trek, do you?"
For some inexplicable reason, the phrase Star Trek conjured up deep feelings of hatred in Han, and it disturbed him slightly. "No," he said firmly.
"Star Wars, then?"
Ah, that was better. Han didn't recognise Star Wars anymore than he did Star Trek, but it gave him a warm fuzzy feeling and almost made him smile. "Yeah, I think so."
"Stop talking about Muggle things," Ron insisted, scowling at Harry. "You know I don't know anything about that. Hey, I know," he said suddenly, brightening. "Let's play Exploding Snap!"
Han stared at the boy, confused. What the kriff was that? The Exploding part worried him slightly. "Sure?"
Ron produced a deck of cards from a pocket and crouched down on the floor, waving a hand for Han and Harry to do the same. Bemused, Han did so, sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room in a school run by Thrawn on a strange planet, and proceeded to play Exploding Snap. He had the strangest feeling that this moment would be the most normal of the entire day.
