Title: Defender's Path

Author: Knife Hand

Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated

Spoilers: Phantom Menace for Star Wars. New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are all ignored. At least the first three or four Harry Potter Books, there will be some changes.

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Don't own em, if I did, I would be worth millions.

Summary: When an accident occurs with a potions experiment, Harry and Hermione wake up in a strange place, but that is not all that is different. Set in Seventh Year, Cross with Star Wars.

" " denotes speech, ' ' denotes thought.

AN: There is no correlation between the HP Verse Timeline and the SW Verse Timeline. Time does move faster in SW than HP but each storyline is told semi independently. The placement in the story had no significant meaning.

AN2: No, the Susan Bones that is Minister for Magic is not the one that went through Hogwarts with the gang. It is her Mother.

The blue fire burned on nothing. Back in their first your at Hogwarts, the fire had been Hermione's little trick and had proved mildly useful as a distraction and a curiosity, as she kept them in little jars. Now, however, the magical fire was of vital importance.

Harry groaned in pain again, so Hermione turned from the fire to check him again. She limped slightly, her right leg a mass of bruises and her right shoulder was badly jarred. Harry was in much worse condition, his ribs were broken, one of them had punctured his lung and a nasty head wound, which had covered his face in blood, now left a clotted mess of his hair. She had patched them both up as well as she could, using both magic and the force, but things were not looking good. After effectively shutting down the drug smuggling operation, they had been heading back to the transport when they had been caught in one of Hoth's infrequent glacierquakes. They were now trapped in a massive crevasse that had been closed off during the icefall of the aftershock. During the icefall more than a tone of jagged icicles had fallen directly on their lightsabers, which they had lost in their own falls. Luckily they had kept their wands securely fastened inside their robes, rather than merely hanging at their belts, and wands were far sturdier than a normal piece of wood.

Pressing her hand lightly to Harry's forehead, she checked the spell she had used to ensure that the broken rib would not further puncture his lung. He was stable, but still asleep, so she turned back to the blue fire which provided both heat and light to the icy cavern. Knowing that they could not make their way back to the transport until Harry awoke, at the earliest, Hermione was stuck, staring at the fire, with her thoughts and fears.

She had known Harry for more than half her life and now she could not imagine living without him. Once she would have included Ron in that thought but that had changed in Fifth Year when Ron spent six months on the edge of self destruction after his father and older brother Percy had been killed by Death Eaters. While Ron had been taking almost suicidal risks, Harry and Hermione had turned to each other to bring them through the pain they felt at the loss, the Weasley's were family after all. When Ron had finally come to his senses they were all still best friends, but the bond between Harry and Hermione went deeper. It was that incident that had sparked the potion project that eventually sent them to the Jedi temple. Ironically they found out what the missing ingredient was, and the name of they potion. It is known throughout the galaxy as Bacta.

She hated feeling so helpless. She needed to help Harry and she couldn't. She had sweated him through his exams, followed him through every adventure, every battle. Taken curses for him, even once when she thought it was certain death. Cried on his shoulder, sat by his bed in the infirmary, woken to see him sitting by hers. They had been through so much together, and now she feared she was going to have to watch the man she loved die lying in an ice cavern on a frozen planet a million light years from home.

'LOVE?!?' she thought, surprised. 'I love Harry?'

"Mione?"

Harry's voice snapped her out of her reprieve.

"I'm here." She said, rushing to his side.

"Help me up." He croaked.

"I don't think you should move yet. Give the spells more time." She said, concern dripping from her voice.

"We need to get back to the ship, Mione." He said, holding out his hand. "Besides, my arse has fallen asleep."

She gently helped him up and draped his arm around her shoulders as she leant his uninjured side against her body for support. She had always hated being called Mione, but from him, it sounded like the sweetest word in the galaxy. She simply enjoyed the feel of his weight against her side as they slowly made their way down the crevasse, lit be her wand. It felt right.

Harry floated. Most times when people on a planet say the floated it was an emotional thing, but Harry literally floated. Ok, it was in a huge vat of Bacta, but still. Apart from the oxygen mask that kept him from drowning, he wore only a pair of tight, black swimming trunks. His focus, however, was not on his own situation, it was on Hermione, or more accurately how little Hermione had on. She was floating in a Bacta vat opposite his and was only dressed in a tight, black bikini. The med-tech's had put Hermione under as she recovered from the ordeal on Hoth.

They had made a rough trip back to the transport. Aside from sliced up hands and feet from the jagged ice, Harry had serious internal bleeding and had shattered his forearm when he had fallen, causing Hermione to fall as well and further jar her shoulder. The worst injury had been from a fallen icicle. It had ripped a path down the left side of Hermione's face and embedded itself into her, at that point undamaged, shoulder. While the melting icicle had cleaned out the shoulder, the gash down her face, which started about half an inch above her eyes, but off to the side of her head, and proceeded down her face, passing just in front of her ear, and ending at the jaw line had become infected and would certainly scar.

A gamut of emotions ran through Harry, ranging from the obvious, with the raging hormones of his body and the sight he was enjoying, to concern and even fear. His concern was for Mione's physical and emotional safety, despite the fact that she was getting the best treatment in the Republic, he could not help but think that he should have been looking after her in the ice cavern instead of her looking out for him, as she had always done. It was his turn, damit. She should have been safe. It's all he ever wanted.

The fear was a bit more complicated. He feared he would lose her, that she would die, that she would walk out and leave him. He feared she would let him in as well. That she would die to save him, that he would fail to protect her. That she would find out his true feelings. That she would not love him the way he loved her. These fears were not new, and he kept them locked away deep inside him, as he had every day since he had fallen head over heals in love with his best friend, all those years ago. It hadn't been a big thing, but it had changed the way he saw her. She had laughed, and his heart had melted. It had been very early in their Fifth Year. The three of them had been studying down by the lake, when Ron made a stupid joke about Professor Snape. She laughed and it felt like someone had just tuned on the light in a room where he had spent a century in darkness.

A tapping on the glass of his vat pulled him out of his thoughts. Marcus, Jasmine and Anakin were on the other side of the glass.

"Can't take you anywhere without you getting into trouble." Anakin shouted through the glass, only to get elbowed in the ribs by Jasmine.

Harry chuckled to himself, then groaned as his ribs twinged. Women were the same everywhere.

"Two day's and you are out." Marcus told him, holding up two fingers, the jerking his thumb over his shoulder, a gesture he had picked up from Harry.

Harry nodded, seeing as he could not talk with the mask on, then pointed at Hermione's vat. Jasmine raised three fingers, and he replied with a thumb's up. Mione would be in her vat a day longer than he would, Master Windu would kill him for losing his lightsabers and he still had to deal with his feelings for Hermione. Joy!

A snap of a twig was the only warning. Four of them ran out of the underbrush and Ron knew they were not Death Eaters and exchanged his G3 for his wand. The dozen who stoped under partial cover about a dozen feet away were, and they immediately began firing off spells at the SAS. His troopers spread out and hunkered down behind whatever cover they could find and opened fire, two firing at the charging figures, which staggered under the blow of the bullets but kept coming.

"Vampires." Ron said calmly to the two troopers, who shifted their aim to the dark, magically controlled, wolves who were trying to flank them.

Ron managed to drop three of the vampires who were charging with spells, the last one charged strait at him, it's slicked back blond hair reminding him of Malfoy. When it reached him, he managed to drive his wand through its heart, causing it to disintegrate into dust. Retrieving his assault rifle, Ron scanned the area, but his troops had managed to drive off or kill the attackers.

"All clear Sarge." A trooper reported. "We lost Mitchell, Clark and Watts is badly wounded."

Ron nodded sadly and indicated that they should move out. They moved carefully but quickly through the forest, everyone with their rifles at the ready.

The decision had been made that Voldermort and his followers had to be driven out of Great Brittan. One square mile at a time if need be. Orders for the Unit's role in the new offensive had been what Padma Patel had delivered two weeks ago, along with his promotion to Sargent. Things had been hard all over, she had told him what she knew as they lay in his blankets, sweaty and naked. He held her as she told of her twin sister, who was in hospital with her lower right leg blown off at the knee, thanks to the Death Eater's magical version of a land mine. They had also talked about the rumours, ranging from Death Eaters beginning to use guns to the hoped for Dragon Corpse that his brother Charlie was supposedly training in a secret location.

Snapping back to the present, Ron scanned the brush. There would be more patrols and contact with the enemy. This was a rescue mission. A company of Airborne had been dropped in this area, and two platoons had been cut off and badly chewed up. His job was to go in and get them out, if possible, or clear an LZ and hold it so the choppers could come in and extract them. At last contact, about half of cut off the Airborne were still alive, along with one of their 'Magical Specialists'. The other platoon's 'Magical Specialist' had broken a vicious Death Eater attack by charging into it with half a dozen of the Airborne troopers from his Platoon, all dieing in the attempt but buying time for the survivors. The remaining Witch had set some defensive Wards and they were dug in to defend till help got there.

Ron vowed he would get them out. That witch was his sister.

TBC…