Harry sighed as the sight of Niima Outpost came into view from the top of the sand dune. The outpost itself was clearly still in full damage control mode after her impromptu arrival through the Veil and the chaos that ensued, but she couldn't care about that right now. Her attention was drawn to the scores of ships laying in varying states of disrepair around the settlement.
"I think I know where a few of the good ships are," Rey said with a nod. "We'll just need to get in close enough."
Harry snorted as they started their descent, though as they approached, they were seen by someone and suddenly had to contend with not just lasers being fired at them, but mortars.
Harry swore as Rey swerved out of the way of an incoming mortar strike, and she gripped onto the headrest of the seat she was in. "Christ on a bike, Rey!"
"You want to survive this or not?" Rey challenged, jack-knifing between rows of disabled ships. More than once as they emerged from the piles of junk, a laser would lance out towards their ship, only for Harry to quickly snap off a shield charm, repelling the shots back to their origin. But even then, it was all she could do without pulling out Fiendfyre.
"Rey, just get us out of here! Find a ship, any ship! For the love of God!" Harry pleaded.
As they went through another row of ships, Ben spoke up from the back seat.
"Stop!" he said. "This ship!"
Rey stopped the speeder, turned to look at what Ben was pointing at and grimaced. "That ship? It looks like a piece of junk!" she protested.
"Piece of-" Ben made a noise of disbelief, but was silenced by a growl from Harry.
"It could be the worst ship in the galaxy. As long as it can fly and get us out of here, it'll do. Let's get out of here now," she hissed.
Rey grumbled a bit at Harry's insistence, but they quickly fled their speeder and into the ship itself.
"I don't know why we had to pick this one," Rey complained as they hurried into the cockpit of the ship. "A YT-1300 freighter? There are ships in this graveyard half-assembled that can beat this one without hesitation."
"That ship doesn't hold the record for the fastest run through the Kessel Run in history," Ben retorted. "Not that it matters. I know this ship will get us out of here. Just get it running!"
"Are there any weapons on board?" Harry asked, looking at their new companion.
"My father kept some spare blasters in a hidden compartment on the far-wall there," Ben said, pointing at a wall panel. "But you've got my lightsaber, why not use that?"
"The idea is not showing your hand to your enemies, kid," Harry said with a snort. "Your laser sword looks real neat, but I need something long-range. I'll be a real shite shot, but at least it'll serve as a deterrent."
She walked over to the panel on the wall, and popped it open. Grabbing one of the pistols off the wall, it took her a few seconds to find the button for the safety, and to figure out how to load the ammunition, but she managed to figure it out with a little help from Magic Precognition, and made her way outside. Several of the gangsters were making their approach, but fortunately her shots either forced them to seek cover, or were surprisingly accurate for someone who'd never fired a weapon before.
The sound of the ship powering up made Harry grin, and she stepped back up into the ship and slapped the button on the wall clearly marked to close the cargo doors.
Once the door shut, she made her way back up to the cockpit, finding Rey and Ben seated at the controls, with Rey piloting the ship into the sky.
"Rey, have you ever flown a ship before?" Harry asked.
"Nope," she said with a grin.
"Oh God," Harry said, covering her face.
…
Somehow, despite it all, they'd managed to get off Jakku without suffering any serious damage to their ship, or their persons. As they started to put distance between themselves and that miserable ball of sand, Harry breathed a sigh of relief.
"Where to now?" Rey asked.
"Well… Benny," Harry said, addressing the third person on the ship. "You're sort of the expert on anything that isn't Jakku here."
Ben looked at the two of them briefly before nodding, before reaching over to the navcomputer.
"Jakku isn't on any of the main hyperlanes," he said, tapping away at the console. "It'll take a couple of days, but we can go to Takodana."
"Why is Takodana so important?" Rey asked.
"It's a non-Republic system under the control of an old friend of my Uncle, Maz Kanata. It's a place where people who aren't trying to draw Republic attention can hide out for awhile and gather information."
"No better place to start," Harry said with a shrug. "Set a course for it, then. After that, I have some questions for you."
It took a few minutes, but their ship managed it's first jump to lightspeed, with their destination being the planet Takodana.
"Now that we're under way," Harry said lowly. "I believe I have some questions for you, Ben."
…
Ben couldn't help but gulp as he felt the Dark Side coil around this woman, Harry. He could feel the power almost rolling off her in cold, crashing waves. He would have to navigate this as carefully as a Jedi, lest he find himself being shoved out an airlock or something barbaric like that.
"How did you find us?" Harry asked carefully.
"Can I ask you a question first?" he asked in return, looking at Harry evenly.
Harry narrowed her eyes but nodded. "Fine."
"How much do you know about the Force?" he asked, curiously. "You mentioned back on Jakku that you didn't know what the Dark Side was."
"Almost nothing," Harry said simply. "I'm a witch, not a… what was the word, Rey?"
"A Jedi," Rey supplied with a nod.
"Yeah, not one of those," Harry said simply.
"The way it was described to me as a child by Uncle Luke, is that the Force is the inherent energy of what binds the universe together," Ben explained. "And that Force is split into two parts– the light, and the dark."
"What's the difference," Harry said, eyebrow raised. "Why would I be darker than most?"
"The Dark Side is… raw, unrestrained power, drawn from passion and emotion. The Light is… restraint, control, holding yourself back for some stupid reason," Ben explained, shaking his head. "Being a Force-sensitive, such as us, and relying on your emotions is considered a bad thing. When you reach that precipice, and you become so deeply involved in it, you Fall."
"You fall?" Harry asked. "I feel like I'm detecting some capital letters in there."
"Fall to the Dark Side," Ben said with a nod. "I haven't quite fallen yet… but I'm getting there. You though, Harry, have already fallen. Your presence in the Force is… the most powerful Dark Side presence I've ever felt in my life, even more powerful than Master Snoke. Your very presence would be repulsive to most Jedi, probably."
"Oh, lovely," Harry said with a roll of her eyes. She hummed and rubbed her knuckles against her jaw.
"Do I have to fear getting killed by your uncle?" she asked pointedly, giving Ben an annoyed look.
"My uncle? No, certainly not," Ben said, considerately. "Well, as long as you're not showing up at the Jedi Praxeum to commit murder, or something like that…"
He snorted. "The Republic, however… they may not take a new Sith Lord well," Ben said, rubbing his neck. "It's sort of a long story."
"We can talk about that later," Harry said, waving her hand. "Now… how did you find us?"
"Your Force presence, like I said, is the strongest Dark Side presence I've felt in my life. I don't know if my Uncle and his students on Yavin 4 felt your presence, but I was on Jakku when you arrived there, and I could feel you like a black hole of darkness in a sea of light. As soon as the sandstorm had passed, I followed you the rest of the way to your hideout."
Harry grunted. "I'll have to shore up my Occlumency shields," she muttered, half to herself. "Can't have people following me around and trying to kill me because I'm having one of my bad days. Merlin's tits."
She took a deep breath and shook her head. "Okay, so… the Dark Side is seen as evil here. If that's the case, then why the fuck do you want to pursue it?"
"Because," Ben said, sticking his nose up. "If I become like my grandfather, I can unite the galaxy and end this cycle of sycophantic back and forth, and do away with the corruption that has defined the Old and New Republics."
"I'm not even going to begin to unpack that bit of repressed bullshit," Harry said, shaking her head. "You're so desperate for some ardent glory that you're trying to be like your grandfather? Did your grandfather tell you to be this way?"
"My grandfather died before I was born," Ben responded. "My mother never wanted to talk about him, but I learned from Master Snoke that he was a powerful Sith Lord who helped bring peace and justice to the galaxy at-large."
"That's certainly not true," Rey said firmly. "I've met so many people on Jakku who had horror stories to tell about the Empire, including how they destroyed Alderaan."
"I am more than aware of what the Empire did to Alderaan," Ben said with a growl. "My mother was part of the royal family. That is part of the reason I want to strengthen myself so that I can destroy all who would do such a thing. I will have vengeance on everyone who sat idly by while Alderaan was destroyed."
"Okay, enough," Harry said, snapping her finger. "Let's simmer down, yeah? Why don't we all just get some rest. I'm sure we're all feeling a bit tetchy after such excitement. This place has quarters for crew, right?"
…
Harry sighed as she sat down on the small cot. It was better than a cupboard, but even that wasn't saying much. Pulling the sword she'd confiscated from that annoying boy earlier, she looked over the chrome hilt with appreciation.
The Hermione in her head was already going five thousand miles an hour talking about the fascinating scientific implications of this, that and the other thing.
Strangely enough, Harry could feel the little ways that the small device came together. Ever since she'd arrived in this strange galaxy of strange people, she had felt more in tune with everything than she'd ever in her life. Like someone had plugged her magic into an electrical mains and now it was hyperaware.
What Ben had described earlier– "the Force", made some sense, though Harry was a little sour at her emotions being seen as… harmful, negative even. Reading between the lines had given her the impression that positive emotions were held in just as much contempt as negative ones. What was the problem of love and passion?
Love had saved her life in more ways than one.
She looked down at the chrome hilt again and furrowed her brow. Something inside of this stupid thing was causing her head to pound, and it was making things… fuzzy.
She pulled the laser sword apart, exposing the various mechanical interiors. After a couple minutes of tinkering, she found the source of her irritation. A large dark red gem of some kind was nestled inside of a slot. It practically radiated wrongwrongwrong.
With a growl, she yanked it out and looked at it. The feeling was intensifying, as if whatever it was was screaming at the prospect of being destroyed. Summoning one of her "dark artefact boxes" from within her backpack, she stuffed the gem inside and locked it tightly before banishing the box back into the utility space.
She hummed in thought as she looked over the now useless sword. What did she have that could replace such a… thing?
She blinked. Would it…?
Reaching into her backpack, she fished around for a few moments before pulling out a small pouch. Pulling open the string, she reached in and pulled out a small, polished black rock.
Rubbing her thumb on the engraved triangle, circle and line, she took in a deep breath.
"Hmm," she hummed. "That might work."
She set the Resurrection Stone aside and eyed it warily before turning her attentions to the hilt itself. The current design looked like something a seventeen year old with emotional issues would make. She wanted it to be a little more fitting to her personality.
With her wand in hand, she began the delicate process of transfiguring the blade to fit what she saw in her mind. The complexities of transfiguration were one of those things that she had come into her own with as an adult. Between McGonagall's side lessons and Hermione's tutoring, she had learned that the depths of the artistic touch of a wand could be the brush that painted the canvas of the universe in so many ways.
Under her gentle ministrations and manipulations, the hilt melted away to form a new shape. Coloured in the warm Gryffindor shades of gold-and-crimson, the metallic design was thatched with a textured grip, and was carved into a more familiar hilt style, and a cross-guard that wasn't borderline fatal to the user– it was reminiscent of the one sword that had never failed her or her friends through basilisks and camping trips.
She picked up the Resurrection Stone and slotted it into where the dark corrupted jewel had been, and tapped the Elder Wand to it.
"Reparo," she murmured, and watched as the pieces reassembled themselves into one whole piece. The Resurrection Stone had always felt weird, but now… it felt almost right. Looking it over, she found the button, aimed the sword away from her and clicked it.
From the hilt sprang a long crimson red blade that bathed her room in a bright glow. It felt kindred, part of her very being, much like the Hallows had been since she'd died and come back.
It was like staring into what had been, and what was to come. She saw Hermione and Ron and NevilleandTonksandSiriusandRemusandLunaandGinnyand…
Taking in a deep breath, she tenatively pushed back against the torrent of the past, but allowed the familiar presence of something wistful and otherworldly rush over her, and tenatively let her magic roam.
She saw the future– a rush of colours and lights and love and kindness and passion and justice and knowledge and victory and knew that things would be alright. Magic sang to her in a way she had never heard in her twenty-four years of life.
It brought tears to her eyes as she listened to the harmonic orchestra swell. She wondered in that moment if this was what the Founders felt when they'd founded Hogwarts, or if perhaps Merlin had felt it all those centuries ago.
As the crescendo of Magic Light Dark Being Matter faded into the background once more, she realized that she could feel a great deal of things just here on this ship. Her hypersensitive ability to feel and notice was amplified now.
She could feel Ben's presence as he irritably paced from room to room, fiddling with his comm– his anxiety rolling off him like a thick, clogging smoke. She could feel it within him– the ambition of a Slytherin, the fool-hardy nature of a Gryffindor, crashing against one another like waves on a rocky shore.
Rey's presence too as she climbed in and out of maintenance shafts trying to keep the ship in one piece– her optimism and excitement brightening everything like a flood light in the dark.
She could feel herself, the cool breeze of all that was her and all that she was. The turbulent, ripping anger and horrid bile of the past, the paradoxical serenity of one touched by Death, and a hint of cautious optimism. Hope. Love.
She could feel as well beyond the metal hull of their ship. The galactic foam rushing past their ship like surf on the ocean, blowing through her ears and mind like waves brushing a boat as it travels through rough and stormy seas.
Turning the lightsaber off, she exhaled the breath she'd been holding in as all those wonderful beautiful senses shrank back into her, compressing all that she had felt into smaller and smaller waves until…
It was gone.
For a moment she could see it all and now… she was alone again with nothing but her own mind.
Magic was… different here. So different. So powerful, beautiful, capable… She'd have to be careful.
…
Wandering the interior of the ship they'd stolen, Harry eventually found her way to the "lounge" where the crew could, theoretically, relax during longer trips. Ben was already there, seated at one of the lounges, pondering over a hologram.
"So, this ship was your Dad's?" Harry asked, leaning against the entryway.
"Yeah," Ben said, his eyes flickering between her and the hologram. Harry glanced down at the hologram, and noticed it was… a family portrait?
There were a few people standing, looking with either a mixture of genuine smiles or forced ones at the camera. The tallest in the group was a man with dark blond hair and a full goatee. He reminded Harry of herself once upon a long-time-ago with his narrow shoulders and slender build, but radiating in power, accentuated by a fashionable dark jumpsuit with a long cloak.
Sitting next to him was clearly a woman who was his sister– or a close relative. They had the same facial structure, though hers was a bit sharper, perhaps. Where the man's blue eyes showed depth in emotion, the woman's brown eyes were hardened and tempered.
Her hair was dark with strands of silver running through it, though Harry thought she seemed a bit young to be going gray already. Perhaps she lived a stressful life like Professor McGonagall had? She was clearly the matriarch of the family with her beautiful, regal gown and jewelry… though she seemed clearly uncomfortable wearing it all, if her forced smile was any indication.
On her other side was a man with salt-and-pepper hair. He didn't seem to care if he was here or not, with the unimpressed, flat look on his face and his… closed physical language towards the rest of the family. He was also the least 'fancy' of the four figures in the hologram, with him wearing a simple shirt, vest and trousers, stained with something undecipherable.
Lastly, sitting beside the woman, was a young teenaged boy– obviously a young Ben.
"Is this your family?" Harry asked, moving across the room to sit next to Ben.
"Yes," Ben said with a nod, before he increased the size of the hologram and sighed, before he pointed at the man in the vest and trousers. "This is my father– Han Solo. He's made his entire life's living off of smuggling things in and out of Mid and Outer Rim and cavorting with pirates. I haven't seen him in… eight years?"
"Eight years?" Harry asked, surprised. "Why so long?"
"It's a complicated story," Ben said darkly, before folding his fingers together and nodding towards the short woman. "The woman is my mother. Leia Organa, the last Princess of Alderaan, though she never uses that title in any capacity now. She was a high profile politician in the Galactic Senate both during the Imperial Empire and the New Republic."
"She was? Why'd she stop?" Harry asked.
"Because of her father," Ben said darkly. "My grandfather."
"He was a Sith Lord," Harry said, not quite understanding. "You said as much."
Ben grunted and pressed a couple buttons on the table and a new hologram sprang up next to his family portrait. The figure was a tall, impressive dark-armored humanoid with their thumbs in their belt. The mask reminded Harry eerily of a skeleton, or some kind of protohistorical death diety.
Death seemed to follow her wherever she went, didn't it?
"Darth Vader, the Emperor's Right Hand," Ben said with a nod. "The most powerful Sith Lord in all of galactic history. He understood the true power of the Dark Side, and all that it could do to make right all the stupid things that have been mucked up by the politicians and their industrialist hangers-on."
He shook his head. "My mother was adopted, because of who her parents were. She grew up as a member of the Alderaani royal family before the planet was destroyed. When it became public knowledge that she was Darth Vader's daughter, it destroyed her career, and my parents' marriage. Dad was… already uninvolved in everything, but after she lost her power… they started fighting, and their relationship fell apart. I spent a few years with my father on this ship before Uncle Luke had me come to his Jedi Praxium."
"And at some point between then and now, your father lost this ship to a junk trader on Jakku," Harry said with a snort.
"It would seem so, but it almost looks like it was recovered, and not taken," Ben said idly. "I'm sure once news that we're flying the Falcon, he'll show his sorry face again."
"This ship's called the Falcon?"
"The Millennium Falcon," Ben clarified. "It may look like a piece of junk YT-1300, but it's a piece of history. From how Dad and Uncle Luke tell it, it played an instrumental part in the downfall of the Empire."
"I guess Uncle Luke's the guy in the robes," Harry commented.
"Yeah, he's the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order– or at least, what passes for it these days. He's… he's a good man, and has taken good care of me, but he just… has days where he's not there with us. Mom says that he suffered a lot in the war, just as she did, and sometimes he's not quite himself."
"PTSD," Harry murmured, clearing her throat when Ben looked at her curiously. "Your uncle has PTSD."
"PTSD?" Ben asked.
"Post-traumatic stress disorder. It's… common among war veterans and people who have experienced… untold terror," Harry explained softly. "Maybe we could meet him someday?"
"I'm sure we will eventually. I didn't exactly tell him I was leaving the Praxium. He'll probably send someone after me before too long, just like he usually does when I run off."
"We'll deal with that when it comes up, then," Harry said with a snort. "Since you know so much about the galaxy at large, you're going to need to get me up to speed. Tell me what you know, Ben."
…
Harry considered herself an incredibly open-minded individual, but she still had a hard time wrapping her head around the sheer scope and scale of the galaxy she found herself in. Hundreds of systems all teeming with sentient life, existing on a carousel of political treachery and black-white power dichotomies that seemed to transcend universes.
Ah, it almost made her long for home.
Most of what Ben had told her about galactic politics went over her head, or she'd merely filed it away as irrelevant owing to Ben's… unique political view. If she'd actually bothered seeing a therapist, she might actually be able to identify why it is he's feeling so violently xenocidal but, you know, she's just a girl with problems of her own.
Their conversation didn't care on much longer than that, and the rest of the trip was spent in relative distance. Rey was far too busy with keeping the Falcon going and fixing the eight-hundred things that had gone wrong on it over the course of the years it had been derelict– and Harry's attempts at helping her had been solidly rebuffed. Even if Harry was a mistress of many forms of magic, she was still completely hopeless when it came to mechanics.
That of course didn't stop Rey from climbing into bed every night and immediately curling up with Harry.
"This ship is a piece of junk," Rey complained as she burrowed deeper into Harry's arms. "So many things on it are on the brink of breaking. We're going to need to get proper parts at some point."
"It'll be fine, love. I suppose it's not the worst thing in the world, flying around in a piece of history."
"A piece of history, yes, but I'd rather fly around in a properly maintained museum piece and not someone's old tossed-together pile of bolts that's been rotting in a desert for years on end!"
Harry said nothing but merely hugged her tighter.
"This Ben bloke," Rey murmured. "Are you worried about him? He tracked us down and tried to convince you to teach him about the Dark Side, whatever that is… what if he tries to kill us or something?"
"Whatever he can do with his magic, I can do tenfold over. Besides, if he tries anything, I'll shove him out the bloody airlock," Harry proclaimed.
"You probably could shove him out of an airlock," Rey said happily. "I knew I liked girls, but you with your muscles…"
Harry laughed and kissed Rey gently on the forehead. "Who was your first crush, then? The sand?"
"No," Rey said, cheeks flaming. "I had access to a lot of Republic and Imperial-era holos. I had a lot of crushes, mostly on people who are probably dead by now."
"Aw," Harry murmured.
"What about you? Who were your first crushes?" Rey asked curiously.
Harry blushed, and gave a lop-sided grin. "There were a couple," she explained with a light laugh. "I dated a few girls in school but all the relationships never ended super well? Let's see… my first ever date was with this girl named Parvati. I was sort of a clod-hopping idiot and stepped on her toes a bunch and was too busy mooning after some other girls… it didn't work out well."
She sighed. "The second girl I dated was a shapeshifter named Nymphadora. She hated her name, you know. Our relationship was just sort of a summer fling. She was way too old for me, but the two of us got on really well while she was guarding my relatives' house, and we decided to break it off once I'd gone back to school."
"I'm sorry it didn't work out for you," Rey commented.
"Eh, the two of us knew it wasn't going to last anyway. We never went too far with our relationship, but we definitely snogged a lot and it was a good stress reliever for the two of us, I think. I'd been recovering from seeing a friend of mine die, and she'd been dealing with stress from this evil Dark Lord coming back from the dead so…"
"You found comfort, but it just… wasn't meant to be. Probably for the best then," Rey nodded in agreement. "How many others?"
"Well… there was Eun-hae in fifth year. She and I went out a couple times but the dates were just disasters. I think she was dealing with her own grief because her boyfriend was that friend that'd been killed. I briefly dated Hermione in sixth year but… that just didn't work out. We agreed to stay friends, but it was just not good for either of us. Then I dated this cute redhead named Ginny, and she was my last girlfriend before I took a trip through the veil."
"Well, aren't you Miss Romance?" Rey said, smirking. "And yet, despite all those girls, I won the jackpot, didn't I?"
"You did," Harry said with a wan smile. "Though don't be too cross with any of them, they're all good people."
"I don't know them, how can I be cross?" Rey asked, sighing. "Do you miss them?"
"Eun-hae and Nymphadora have been gone for a long time now," Harry murmured, frowning at the thought of her lost friends. "They died seven years ago. Ginny, Hermione and Parvati are still around, but Hermione was the only one I was on speaking terms with by the time I went through the Veil. I… had a difficult time adapting to life after the war, and it hurt my relationships with a lot of people."
"I think…" Harry went to respond before humming. "I do miss most of the people that left me behind, but I don't blame them for it, I guess. I'm not well, and I can't expect them to wait forever for me to find my way."
Rey reached up and gently pressed a kiss to Harry's chin. "I'll wait as long as you need me to, love."
Harry merely tightened her grip around Rey's midsection and nuzzled her deeper. "Thank you, Rey."
…
"You know," Rey commented as she climbed out of one of the maintenance panels a few days later. "We're going to need more crew if we want to keep this ship running."
"My father was able to run this ship with just him and Chewy, why do we need more?" Ben protested irritably from where he was sitting.
"Because I'm the only bloody person working on this ship, arsehole!" Rey sniped back at the petulant Jedi. "You've been brooding in your quarters this whole trip for no bloody reason. At least Harry has a reason to not help, she's never seen any of this shite because she comes from a universe where humans haven't even left their own gravity well."
"You make it sound like I'm prehistoric," Harry said with a snort. "We have walked on the Moon, you know."
"You sort of are prehistoric, darling, but that Zune of yours is far and above cooler than anything I've ever seen. Plus it seems more music and art has been made because your civilization hasn't been obssessed with galactic travel like ours. So, it's all a wash anyway," Rey said with a grin, before turning back to Ben. "You can either start helping me, or tell me how we can get our hands on an astromech. Your choice, Jedi boy."
"Why do we need a- what was it, astromech?" Harry asked, confused.
"Astromech droids are one of the most effective types of droids you can buy for ship maintenance," Ben said simply, sweeping some hair from his eyes. "Dad never believed in them, said that he didn't like little robots running around his feet, but then again, he never liked most things. Uncle Luke's astromech was always fun to be around, though."
"Well, we can worry about crews and astromechs when we're not flying around by the seat of our pants," Harry said with a snort. "In the mean time, Ben– just help Rey with this stuff, aye? I'd offer to use my repair spells but she's a bit superstitous about 'em."
"It's not superstition, I'm just worried that it might do something unexpected!" Rey said, blushing. "I'd rather not have our ship explode or shear into oblivion because your spell changes some property constant and causes the hyperdrive to fail."
Ben sighed and dragged his hand down his face. "Fine," he said with a grumble. "I'll help you."
…
Harry hummed as she thought about what would be appropriate outerwear for a neutral den of people with questionable morals. She didn't want to go into this place blind, so she'd definitely be wearing her new light sword, but… she didn't quite want to go advertising that she'd had it.
Perhaps a slight Notice-Me-Not would work?
But what would look right here?
Ben walked around in flowing robes that looked absolutely ridiculous on him, and Rey wore the same brown-and-white tunic and trousers. Perhaps something that met up in the middle of a bunch of those things would do.
She hummed and remembered that one beach trip she went on after the war, and had an increasingly interesting idea of what might be appealing and attract some kind of attention but give some level of mystery.
The first thing she grabbed was her dragonhide boots. She'd gotten them as a gift from Charlie Weasley after she'd spent eight months in Romania working in the Sanctuary with him, and they were quite servicable, formidable, and able to withstand a lot. She hadn't worn them when she'd gone through the Veil, but she figured they'd withstand most of the elements of all the collective worlds of this galaxy. Throw in a simple pair of trousers and a gold-and-red tunic?
She'd have to ask Rey what she thought, but she was pretty sure it would be enough to not grab a bunch of attention.
After pulling her tunic down over her head, she reached over to where the datapad that Rey had given her was sitting. The previous owned of this ship, Ben's dad, Han, apparently had quite an extensive database about the galaxy at-large in his… colourful prose that honestly reminded Harry of some of the Americans she'd met over the course of her life.
Harry reflected on the notes Han and written down about Maz Kanata and Takodana. A forest planet full of hostile flora and fauna outside of the one or two major settlements, and that just about anything could be requisitioned from there with the right motivations. The only other planet that had more of a mercenary reputation was Nevarro.
But it was dangerous– Han had numerous examples of how he'd narrowly escaped getting shot or otherwise getting involved with double-dealings as a result of Maz's "requests" for him in exchange for something like information or material items.
She took in a deep breath and sighed. Was this what she wanted? She hadn't felt… right back home, but was this any better? Seven years hadn't done anything to assuage the grief she felt, and she doubted that Sirius would be anywhere in the galaxy, all things considered… but she had to try– and if this Maz Kanata woman could help, then perhaps she had a chance to find her peace.
