AUTHOR NOTE – Crossover with Star Wars
Anakin Skywalker brooded evily (as opposed to his many other types of brooding over the years, and don't even get him started on his brooding about sand, I mean, it's coarse and rough and… well just don't get him started) as he marched through the halls of the Jedi Temple. The sounds of screaming and fighting filled the air as he made his way to complete his grim mission.
It was hard to believe that just that very morning he had woken up brooding about being a Jedi in a forbidden marriage. He was married to a beautiful woman who was pretty chill about his whole obsession with sand and his current tally of 2005 ways in which it is the worst (to be fair, 1973 of the ways are just alien synonyms for coarse). Why couldn't the Jedi just be more understanding of his need to ignore all their rules whenever he wanted, he brooded questioningly. Sure, they ignored their rules for him when they initially let him join the Jedi order. They also ignored their rules, when they raised him through the ranks at a recklessly fast rate. And they consistently turned a blind eye to his constant insubordination. They also ignored some of their most sacred rules when they gave him a seat on the Jedi Council decades before anyone else had ever been given the seat. But, those hidebound Jedi, they had yet to approve of his secret marriage of which they were unaware. Yes, it was hard to believe that very morning he was brooding on the unfairness of the Jedi to deny his secret marriage when he was the epitome of the Light Side, and now here he was completely devoted to the Dark Side of the Force and obeying the will of his new master the Galactic Emperor Palpatine / Sith Lord Sidious.
"I was never able to be an emotionless drone, like the Jedi wanted me to be", brooded the newly minted Sith Apprentice.
It should be noted that Anakin's understanding was a vast simplification of the Jedi's teachings. The full lesson was closer to accepting emotions but learning to not let them rule your behavior. After all, if they had kept with that simplified lesson then hardly any Jedi would have been able to handle the high and low emotions off extreme situations and would end up doing something stupid (like, hypothetically obsessing over and stalking the first pretty girl they happen to meet as a 6 year-old child, and then thinking the key to seduction is a treatise on how sand gets everywhere). Unfortunately for the Jedi, Anakin found the lessons on emotional control to be boring, so he listened with half an ear while thinking about how to make his acrobatics look kick-ass.
"The Jedi have always said there is no coming back from the Dark Side, so I shall embrace it fully", the Dark Dude brooded with an evil smirk.
Another note should be made at this point to state that this is another simplification of the teachings of the Jedi. The true lesson was more about how the taint of darkness will always mark your soul, but redemption is possible. They mainly told the younglings that there is no coming back from darkness because it takes some maturity to understand the shades of gray. After all, if there was no coming back, then 90% of the Jedi would be Sith after acting in anger when they went through puberty. Anakin found these deeper lessons on morality to be boring, and so was more focused on the best way to look casually awesome while holding his lightsaber.
"The Jedi would never let me stay with my secret wife and child. I must think of my child! I must save my child! Welp, time to go kill a bunch of children"
As a final note, Anakin was tuned out for almost every class involving learning words (like, "self-awareness", "irony", "hypocrisy", and "Duuuuuuuude! Really, Dude?").
Anakin left the Clone Troopers behind him as he entered the room holding the younglings. The younglings who would one day become Jedi themselves, and therefore had to be neutralized as a threat. He found it somewhat odd that the chairs in the room had been pulled into a large circle, with a large blanket covering the top of the circle. It looked vaguely like a tent in the center of the room. No matter, his senses told him that the younglings were hiding in the tent.
Two young children exited the tent.
The first child, a boy with dirty blonde hair, of probably 7 years of age, approached Anakin with worry in his voice and seemingly incredibly innocent (some might say suspiciously innocent). "Master Skywalker! There are too many of them, what are we going to do?"
Anakin took a breath and allowed the evil to fill his soul. He angled his hand towards the ground, and then lit his lightsaber with a slight flick of his wrist downwards (totally nailing his "cool lightsaber stance #8"). The youngling took a step back in response.
The second youngling took a step forward and Anakin felt a moment of surprise. Instead of looking concerned or scared, the youngling looked… curious. Anakin stared into the bright green eyes of the youngling with black messy hair, and a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. The boy cleared his throat and pointed to a previously unseen sign posted next to the tent's entrance. The boy then grabbed the other child's hand and they both walked back into the tent.
Anakin blinked, read the sign, and chuckled darkly. As he walked towards the tent's entrance, he idly wondered when the Jedi had allowed the younglings to play games like this. Still, he was a Sith, he was hardly going to be stopped by a crudely written sign that said "Kids Only! No Adults Allowed!"
Harry Potter was finally having fun in space. Well, to be fair, he was currently on an alien planet instead of a spaceship. But it had aliens and wasn't an Earth, so it was close enough. Also, it wasn't like he couldn't visit space whenever he wanted.
Things were initially threatening to be boring after an exciting start. When he had first arrived, there had been several kids dueling with swords made of lasers that made nifty sounds that really made him want to mimic said sound with his mouth.
"Vruuuuuum! Woooommmm! Wooooommm! Kssssssh!"
Harry was not one who often ignored his wants.
The kids (and the adult instructor) turned towards the sound, and saw a grown man waving a blue plastic sword around while making sounds that seemed to roughly mimic a lightsaber. Two of the kids struggled to suppress their grins as the man flailed about the room like a droid wearing the wrong limbs who has somehow learned the trick to making droids drunk.
The instructor, Jedi Buzzkill (possibly not his real name), was not as amused. The galaxy was at war, and they could ill afford to be incautious with their security. He was a highly trained Jedi, and he wasn't going to take stupid chances. Letting a stranger among the younglings would be as stupid as assaulting the Head of State for the Republic without first neutralizing the threat posed by his absolute control of the massive Republic military. Or possibly rushing into the seat of power of a Sith Lord with a minimal strike force. No Jedi would possibly be that stupid, and Jedi Buzzkill was not an idiot.
"Sir!" Jedi Buzzkill spoke in his most authoritative voice. "I must demand that you stop what you are doing and come with me so I might escort you to speak with the guards".
Harry looked at the man, and despaired. It would figure that there would be someone who would want to suck all the joy out of laser swords. He then looked over at the kids who were watching him and despaired further (would that be despairingly despaired?) when they all seemed completely stoic. He was about to instantly jump universes, when he saw one of the kids bite her lower lip in an effort not to smile. Harry smiled. The adult may be a dud, but the kids might be up for having fun if they were to free to do so.
After watching the stranger wave his hand, Jedi Buzzkill realized that he was late for his vacation that had apparently been booked and approved months ago. He suddenly remembered that this new person was a civilian instructor, so he left the younglings in his care (oddly enough, every other Jedi completely forgot when it was their turn to check in on the younglings). Within two hours Jedi Buzzkill was off for his vacation on the fabulous swamp planet of Dagobah (perhaps it should be noted that this vacation turned out to not be as fabulous as one would imagine a swamp planet vacation would be, especially for a member of an alien race who is most comfortable in arid locales).
Harry then smiled at the children and approached them. With each step, Harry grew younger until he was an excitable 7-year-old child.
"OK gang, time to learn about the glory that is recess"
Over the next month, Harry discovered the fun of playing as a child. It had been a pleasure that was denied to him initially, and so this was a wonderful change of pace. Initially, the Jedi kids were a bit hesitant to play games with Harry, but they got over that quickly. The children likely got over their initially hesitancy after their first trip to the accretion disk of a black hole and played "who can stay out of the black hole longest AKA Race the Light". Apparently, there is something about violating the rules of reality that loosens up even the most serious of children.
After warming up with the Black Hole (first fishing the kids out with an oversized fishing rod), they went on a grand tour of the galaxy, based on the whims of the kids. After granting the children with their own abilities to teleport around at will, with no limits to distances, they played a galaxy spanning game of hide and seek. One child was found hiding directly behind a large slug-like being known as Jabba. Another child asked to be given the power to shrink and grow at will and was found hiding in the ear of Jedi Master Yoda, constantly whispering corrections to the old master's butchering of the rules of grammar. A final child, asking for the ability to transform shape, spent a week as the lightsaber for Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi (leading to a confused Obi Wan wondering why his lightsaber had taken up humming dramatic songs whenever he was engaged in battle).
Along with the games, Harry taught the children the glory of acting innocent to ensure a prank goes right (not that Harry ever bothered acting innocent, but he figured that it would be something George would want future pranksters to learn). They started out simple, by having the youngest kid use her Puppy Dog eyes (in this case, this was just a metaphor, though Harry did consider making it literal) to convince the monarch of small planet to build the galaxy's largest amusement park. From there, they started to work on bigger pranks.
After a month, Harry was feeling well and truly pleased. The children had been mildly empowered to help with their pranking (which Harry never realized made them the most powerful beings this universe had ever known). And so, they returned to the Jedi Temple to prepare a going away party for the happy wizard. The kids even surprised him by building a blanket fort for him. The inside of the fort was of course much bigger than the ramshackle outside appearance would imply.
They had even gotten some going away toy lightsabers to play with. Sadly, the kids didn't communicate on this, so they all brought toy lightsabers. They now had over a hundred lightsabers, but only about a dozen kids to play with them.
As they wondered with the too many lightsabers, they heard someone entering the room. Looking outside, one of the kids (Harry never learned their names. Everyone was just "Hey you!") peeked out and yelled back. "It's Master Skywalker, maybe he'll know what to do with all our extra lightsabers".
So, Harry and Hey You walked out, Hey You asked for help by saying "Master Skywalker! There are too many of them, what are we going to do?" Master Skywalker lit his lightsaber, indicating he understood the problem they had with the excessive number of lightsabers. Harry then made sure Master Skywalker knew the rules of the tent, and they went back into the tent to have some fun. Master Skywalker followed right after and entered the tent as an adorable 6-year-old child making play noises with his mouth while swinging a now harmless lightsaber.
Shortly afterwards, an excessively large number of armored soldiers rushed into the tent. Well, a bunch of 5-year-old armored soldiers rushed into the tent with toy guns while yelling "Pew Pew".
As the party wound to an end, Harry said goodbye all to his new friends. All the little Hey Yous, and the weirdly smiling/broody Cloudrunner kid, and the identical clones he decided to just call Fred. With a fond farewell, he walked out of the tent to see a deeply scarred man wearing a dark cloak, peering at him with yellowish eyes.
"Where is Skywalker?" the man rasped out.
Harry shrugged, he knew that there was a… Airstrider (maybe?) kid, but Skywalker just sounded silly as a name. "I don't know"
The man sneered. "Then you are unneeded little one. Goodbye". With that, the man pointed his hand at Harry and shot bolts of immensely destructive lightning at the poor defenseless wizard child.
Harry patted his head, to smooth out his now standing hair. "Do you know how long it takes to get static electricity out of my hair!? Man, you are just like Jedi Buzzkill and the other adults I have overhead. It's all Light Side and Dark Side with you people. Don't you know there is no Light or Dark, there is only fun, and those who are too boring to seize it. Way to have me leave me on a low note!"
The young boy continued silently grumbled and then flicked his fingers at Palpatine (not that Harry knew the man's name, since he was too rude to introduce himself). With that finger flick, the Sith Lord / Emperor gasped as he felt a massive shift in the fabric of reality, and he could almost swear that the Force was now whispering "Loser" in his mind. Looking up, he saw the young boy grow into a man in his mid-20s, and then burst into an explosion of energy, with a ring of energy expanding away from the central ball of energy (and was that a tiny flat spaceship outrunning the energy wave?). The man was nowhere to be found.
"What the hell?"
With that basic realignment of the fundamental truths of this universe, Harry left to go find some more fun elsewhere. He never knew that he had transformed the Force to be powered by light-hearted fun, nor that it had become super charged to support the more epic pranks. He never knew that his transformation of the Clone Troopers in the temple reverberated across all the clones, turning them all into 5-year-old prankster children (nor that no one would ever understand why they now called themselves the Fred Troopers). He never knew that the boring politicians found themselves constantly having to ignore the universe as it telepathically taunted them for embracing the Boring Side of the Force (with Emperor retiring from the political arena while mumbling "I am getting too old for this sith"). He certainly never knew that the ancient Jedi Master Yoda embraced the Fun Side more emphatically then any other adult Jedi (apparently his use of bad grammar was a private prank he had been playing for the past 637 years), and that his enthusiasm would see him empowered into the immortal Prank God of the Universe.
With her husband now a 6-year-old child, Padme ended up marrying Obi Wan and raising her twins and former husband as their own children. Their marriage was a happy one, full of fun and joy. Though he wished he could get his lightsaber to stop humming epic songs.
Sadly, even as a mostly carefree child, Anakin Skywalker's hatred for his greatest foe still flowed through his veins. One day… he swore… one day he would finally destroy all the sand in the universe!
