"Ah," Harry said as she leaned back in her chair, staring out the viewport at the hazy planet surface on the horizon. "Another desert planet full of murderous people. How many of these are there in this galaxy?"

"There are thousands of systems. You take a guess," Ben said snarkily.

"Yuck," Harry quipped, propping her feet up on the table. "Is this even worth our time, Ben? Is there something down there that is going to resolve some burning question you've been having about the meaning of the universe or what?"

"The incomplete research of that guy back on Jakku," Ben explained with a scowl. "It speaks of a myth spread by the sand people, about a vengeful spirit that ransacked an entire village once, and how all the remaining clans avoid that area out of fear of awakening the vengeful spirit. He had some kind of theory that there was a Sith artefact out there that was the direct cause of such incidents."

Harry merely gave him a quizzical look. "I've been around many ghosts in my life, and I've never heard of anything quite that severe, even from a poltergeist."

"That's what his research says," Ben emphasized. "I want to go down and investigate it. We'll either find a Sith artefact, or we'll get a clue about what happened and we'll be able to go from there, milady."

"Fine," Harry commented. "Where are we headed on the planet anyway?"

"An area called The Valley of Spirits, not far from the Jundland Wastes," Ben commented. "It's technically in the Dune Sea, but honestly Tatooine geography is more of a suggestion than an actual boundary."

"Are we going to land that way, or do we need to stop in a city first?" Harry asked.

"Stop in a city," Ben said, hunching over a map of Tatooine that he'd taken from the archeologist. "Not that I trust the local authorities to not try to extort us, but the problem is that if we just land our ship in the dunes, we'll come back to find it stripped bare by Jawas. They're another species of nomads, though they have these things called sandcrawlers and roam from settlement to settlement buying-and-selling droid parts and other scrap they can get their hands on, typically from ships and speeders left out in the sands, or abandoned farms that got hit by the sand people."

"They sound mercenary," Harry commented. "Will they be an issue?"

"If we don't leave our ship abandoned in the dunes, no," Ben said simply. "We'll be fine. Tatooine is big-gun diplomacy. If we don't piss off any bounty hunters or Imperial raiders, we'll be fine."

"Ha, you don't know me well enough," Harry responded with a cheeky grin. "Getting into trouble is my middle name… well that's not true, it's James but it may as well be my middle name."

"It can't be any worse than Jakku," Rey interjected. "It actually sounds almost exactly like Jakku."

"It's not too dissimilar, it's… it's just that civilization there is much older," Ben explained. "Also, it isn't indentured servitude but straight chattel slavery that drives the surface economy."

Harry's expression darkened, and she climbed to her feet and summoned her cloak. "Well," she breathed, the Dark Side coiling around her like a protective serpent. "I guess there's nothing more to do but get this over with. Shall we go kick the wasp's nest, lovies?"

A venomous part of her brain that sounded an awful lot like Hermione was already raising all kinds of hell as their ship approached the spaceport. Much to her own shame, she had been one of the many who hadn't taken Hermione's great crusade seriously. It had been nothing but a silly joke with an even sillier name, and she had failed to grasp just the seriousness of it. She was a child, but ignorance was no excuse. The idea that she had been so inhumane nauseated her.

That guilt that had long dwelt in her stomach burned even stronger now that she came face to face with the reality of a galaxy that seemed to embrace slavery with an even greater zeal than her fellow wizards and witches did.

She couldn't help but remember.

Dobby, the life draining from his eyes as he gave that last full measure of devotion to people who… didn't seem to think of him as a sentient being with equal intelligence, equal ability. Winky, despondent at being cast aside, driven to her death by cruel, uncaring masters. Even Kreacher, for all his ills and sins, was still a being and should have been treated as such. She had condoned Sirius' actions, seeing them as a tête-à-tête stemming from years past, and had not given a single solitary second thought to if what he was doing was right or wrong.

Perhaps Kreacher was a bad example. She still hated that little slimeball for the role he played in Sirius'… ending up here, come to think of it. Wherever here happened to be. In the long distant past, or in the future.

Harry remembered the tender graze of flames as they grew and consumed and twisted and changed. One final dagger in the eye of a society that long condemned her and her godfather. The prison cell that had held him for so long, gone beneath a wall of flames.

The House of Black, and all they beheld, was dead and gone, never to be resurrected again.

That macabre darkness within her wanted to take every iota of her latent fury out on these people. For their audacity to keep people, living, breathing people in slavery. She wanted to squeeze their fragile little necks in her hands until the light bled from their eyes and they understood the price of their barbarity.

Harry stilled. These souls were marked for death, but not by her hand. It was so easy for her to take a life. She had done it time and time before, and would do it time and time again. It was as easy as breathing for her. And yet, she knew in the howling maw of her soul that the privilege of seeing these disgusting creatures to their demise fell solely on those that they had so horribly wronged.

With a grimace, she rubbed her jaw in thought as they disembarked the ship. She could feel Rey's presence brush up beside her, and she looked over at her girlfriend. The brightness that she gave off was a soothing balm to Harry's weary soul, and she was grateful for having been so lucky as to stumble across someone like her in the maelstrom of her trip through the Veil.

Rey gave her a soft smile as she rested her hand on Harry's arm. The soothing feeling of flesh-on-flesh and her girlfriend's warmth assuaged Harry's burning torrent of self-loathing for a moment, allowing the older woman to take a deep breath and refocus. Issue at hand, first. She knew there was plenty of time for creative loafing and the destruction of those she wanted destroyed, but responsibility to her friends took priority.

"If anything happens to this ship," Ben said darkly to the weird bug-looking alien standing just inside the place they'd parked. "I promise you, even the Guild won't be able to protect your sorry hide. Do you understand me?"

The alien made a chittering growling noise, and seemed to get rather aggressive. Before Harry could step over and do what she did so well, Ben pulled a blaster out and placed it against the carapace of the insect-like being. "Do you think I'm joking? And if this isn't enough to convince you, I'm sure my shadowy friend over there would make your day that much worse."

The alien looked in her direction, and seemed to quaver a bit before adopting a much more reconciliatory attitude. Harry felt a shot of self-loathing lance through her heart again. Was that her destiny, to be something revolting and disgusting for the rest of her life? It was almost as bad as people staring at her to get a good look at the scar.

Scowling, she followed Ben and Rey out into the oppressive desert day.

"We'll need to get a speeder," Ben started, pointing at a nearby vendor that was apparently renting something that looked like a completely sodded up motorbike.

"No we don't," Harry commented, snorting. "Let's get a little distance between ourselves and prying eyes, and I'll show you why."

The constipated, uncertain look on Ben's face made Harry crack a grin as they made their way into an empty alleyway. She tugged down the collar of her robe and showed her friends the small charm necklace she was wearing– it had been a gift from Hermione on her twentieth birthday, a sort of 'congrats on making it this far!' that had been quite touching. Harry had since used it as a quick way to pull out some of her more useful utilities.

She tapped her wand to one of the charms, and it popped free before growing and twisting until Sirius' old Triumph Bonneville sat in the Tatooine sands. Harry climbed onto it and gave Rey and Ben a daring look. "Ta-da, free magical transportation. It even has a side car for you, Ben."

"You're joking," Ben said, deadpan. "You want me to ride in that thing? Why does it have wheels?!"

"Once upon a time it was a piece of non-magic technology. My civilization isn't very advanced, you know. My godfather charmed it to fly and all that sort of thing. Your choice if you want to ride this or try your luck renting a speeder."

"Fine," Ben growled, folding his arms and stepping over to the sidecar and stepping into it. He lowered himself down into the seat and gave her a death glare.

"Rey, just sit on the seat behind me and wrap your arms around my torso. You won't fly off, I promise," Harry explained, reaching out a hand to her girlfriend. Unlike Ben's reluctance, Rey seemed thrilled at the idea of something mechanical and magical mixing together this way. She climbed on and hugged Harry's back tight, warming Harry's heart.

"Alright, hang on tight!" Harry called out, before the engine roared to life. Despite the fact the wheels were mired in a few inches of sand, the bike lifted off the ground and floated in the air a few inches.

"Activating invisibility charm," Harry murmured, pressing a red button on the handle. Once she was sure that they had faded from sight, she revved the engine and shot off like a bottlerocket into the sky, much to the consternation of Ben, and the screaming, ripping joy of Rey.

After levelling out, Harry glanced at her moody Jedi friend sulking in the sidecar. "Ben, you've gotta tell me where to go, mate."

"We just landed in Mos Espa, so the direction we should be heading is southwest," Ben explained, pointing to the horizon. "I'll tell you when we're getting close."

Harry squinted in the general direction where Ben was pointing. Something was vaguely pinging her internal radar, and so she decided that she could see the sense in his directions enough to follow. Fortunately, it was a far cry from a long trip.

As they headed into the desert and mountains, that sense of something at the back of her head began to grow stronger. As they neared a mountain pass, Harry made to land.

"What are you doing?" Rey asked, shifting in her seat.

"Whatever's in that valley, I don't like the feeling I'm getting from it. We're going this last stretch on foot. Don't want to go flying into a trap or an ambush or something," Harry explained, landing the bike in the sand before stepping off. "Not with Sirius' bike."

After her friends had disembarked, she tapped her wand to the bike again, it shrank back to a small charm that re-attached to her necklace. She took a deep breath and squinted towards the feeling of wrongwrongwrong that she was feeling. "Whatever's there… do you feel it, Ben?"

"Barely," Ben said, narrrowing his eyes in thought. "I… I don't really know how to explain it. Unnatural, even?"

"It's death," Harry breathed, shaking her head. "This planet is covered in it, but there… it's far worse, something terrible. Keep your weapons ready, in case we need them. I don't like what I'm feeling."

The trio approached the mouth of the valley, and at the crest, looked down into what lay below.

"This part of Tatooine is more clay and mesa than sand," Ben said softly. "Whatever's here should still be pretty well preserved, and we shouldn't have any problems from the sand people, they avoid this area like the plague."

"For good reason, it's definitely fucked beyond all reasonable doubt," Harry sniffed before humming. "You mentioned before about the archeologist's notes on this place. Vengeful spirits?"

"Nobody's ever really been able to explain why this part of the planet is so unnervingly dark," Ben explained. "The Jedi effectively stopped sending out archeological teams at the onset of the Clone Wars, and the Empire never cared that much about this planet to really do any major investigations… at least until my uncle and mother became involved. Even then, there's nothing that illustrates any kind of major dark side nexus on Tatooine in their records either."

"So whatever this is, it's more recent?" Harry asked.

"It could be," Ben said with a hum. "Tatooine is in the Outer-Rim, so… lots of things just kind of happen here and nobody cares or notices. My uncle lived here for nineteen years, and apparently so did my grandfather and great-grandmother, if my uncle's stories are to be believed."

"Mmm," Harry hummed as her eyes scanned the horizon. "Benign neglect. If it moves, tax it, but otherwise, who cares."

"Not even that," Ben said dryly. "Tatooine was the personal fief of Jabba the Hutt until my mother killed him, and then a bunch of warlords, then Boba Fett, then after he died, it fell into the hands of the guilds."

"Like Jakku, then?" Rey chimed in. "Or Bracca, even. Scrappers who earn crumbs from industrialist-backed guilds while the Republic pulls in the profits."

"Exactly," Ben said with a nod. "The promise of the Old Republic, New Republic and even the Empire is nothing more than a myth told to children, as far as the people on this planet are concerned. Uncle Luke once told me that it was one of the reasons that he never properly trusted the Republic, despite my mother's attempts to alleviate his fears. That was always a sticking point between them, actually."

"Your mother wanted him to support this New Republic unconditionally, and your uncle refused?" Harry ventured a guess.

"Yes," Ben responded with a sigh. "To be honest with you, I don't know if they've ever really put that matter to rest. I just remember these terrible screaming matches they'd sometimes have when talking about Grandfather or about whatever political problem had cropped up that they disagreed on."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Harry said gently. "It's not pleasant, seeing people you love bicker like that."

After some further trekking through the dusty valley, they arrived on the outskirts of what appeared to be a warzone. Old tents made of some kind of animal skin had deep gashes in them, and dessicated remains of diminutive creatures littered the small campsite, particularly around something that resembled a fire pit.

"Death has touched everything here– cursed it," Harry murmured, grimacing at what she was feeling. "You said these people were called 'sand people'?"

"The more appropriate label are Tuskens," Ben explained. "They're a nomadic culture that is fiercely territorial. They're a frequent menace to moisture farmers, are known for their brutality and violence, and predate all other forms of civilization on Tatooine, if I remember correctly."

"I can't blame them for being territorial then, they were colonized," Harry murmured as she looked over the skeletal remains of the small village. She had an intimate familiarity with the concept, being an half-Indian, half-Welsh child raised in an utterly unrepentant English supremacist family. In that moment, she felt an unending well of sympathy for the Tuskens.

With a grunt, she cut off that train of thought. She dropped to her hand to her hip and drew her lightsaber and lit it in one swift motion. The sense of everythingness that she had experienced on the Millennium Falcon came back, and she focused on her surroundings, relying on the Resurrection Stone to guide her.

Why has Death cursed this land? she asked into the howling maelstrom. What happened here?

Suddenly, she felt it press in on her from all sides. Loss, grief, anger, rage, darkness.

"Someone died here," she murmured. "And another person– a mage, a Jedi, a Sith, someone lost control. It was a slaughter. The blood of the slain and the raging darkness cursed this village."

"You said that you felt Death here," Ben murmured. "Can you sense Death?"

"I have a unique relationship with the concept of death," Harry explained. "Because of who I am and the circumstances in which I… died and came back, I have a certain number of things I can do related to Death. I can't bring back the dead once they're gone, but I can certainly communicate with any spirit I choose, and can feel it when souls have been mutilated or otherwise damaged."

"Is that what happened here?" Rey asked.

"No, not a soul mutilation. Those require entire rituals and are far more damaging. There are pockets on Earth of… Death. Places where nothing grows, and Death is all there is. I'd mention the trenches in France, but neither of you know what that is," Harry murmured, shaking her head. "There is nothing to be gained here, only misery."

"There has to be some kind of Dark Side artefact here," Ben ventured. "It can't just be that simple."

"It is that simple. If there is any person among the three of us who can feel the Dark Side, it's me," Harry snapped, glaring at Ben. "Trust me, there is nothing here worth preserving or keeping. Just the sun-bleached remains of a village of a nomadic people who pissed off the wrong wizard or witch."

"Could either of you be able to tell where the vengeful spirit– or person, I suppose, went?" Rey asked.

"It's not impossible," Harry murmured. "Things like this do leave a very deep impression for a very long time. I can't guarantee anything, but we could try. Ben?"

"It might be important," Ben agreed. "Let's pursue it."

They had ended up following the vague trail of "Death" for dozens of kilometers, tracking back southeast through the mountainous ridges of the Jundland Wastes. That path had taken them all the way to the outskirts of a singular farmstead.

"There," Harry said, stopping Sirius' bike and pointing at the small homestead they were approaching. "It feels just like that Tusken settlement. I don't know if we'll find anything more there, to be honest."

"It's still worth a shot," Ben grumbled, climbing out of the sidecar and starting the trek towards the homestead. Harry sighed, returned the bike to her necklace, and followed Ben towards the standing structures. The first thing she noticed was that years in the sun and… fire at some point had gutted the entrance to the farmstead. Fragmented remains of skeletons and sandy, melted plastic objects lay littered around the scene.

"Imperials did this," Rey said, kneeling down to look at one of the melted helmets. "I've seen plenty of these on my holos. Stormtroopers, right?"

"Whoever these people were, they must have pissed off the Empire," Ben said. "Harry, do you feel anything unique about here other than just the fact it's covered in Death?"

"The sense of Death sort of overpowers a lot of things," Harry admitted. "I'm sorry. How about we do this. Ben and I will go down into the interior, to see if there's anything in there worth… you know, preserving or something. Rey, I want you to sort of do the perimeter of the homestead. See if you can find anything, and let me know."

She tapped her necklace with her wand and handed Rey her small compact mirror two-way communicator. "Just say my name, and I'll answer, alright?"

"Got it," Rey said dutifully, grinning.

After Rey had gone, Harry sighed and approached the door to the home. "Keep your eyes open," she instructed Ben. "The masonry is probably not the most stable thing in the world, yeah?"

She and Ben both lit their sabers, illuminating what remained of this poor family's home in a mixture of bright green and bloody crimson. Nothing about it looked like a home anymore.

"Scorch marks from blasters," Ben murmured. "And then they used actual fire to burn the family out, if these burn marks over here are any indication."

"The Imperials, no mercy for people suspected of… what, treason?" Harry asked. "Seems a bit excessive for one farm."

"They must've been involved in something nasty," Ben murmured. "Probably had ties to Mom and the Rebel Alliance, or something. During the Imperial era, that is the only thing I can think of that would warrant such a response from the Empire."

Suddenly, Harry felt a warm vibration from her pocket. She quickly pulled out her compact and snapped it open. Rey's face showed in the mirror. "Rey, what's going on?"

"I've got something here you two should see," Rey explained. "It might be a good reason why this place is the way it is."

"We'll be there in a second," Harry said, closing her compact and looking at Ben. "I'll just side-along you."

"Side-alo-" Ben's question was cut short when she grabbed his wrist and apparated away.

Harry winced and gently patted her Jedi friend on his back as he retched and threatened to vomit up his breakfast. "That was terrible," he breathed unevenly before speaking. "What was that?"

"That was apparition. It's not nearly as bad once you've done it a few times. It's just rough for a first-timer," Harry explained softly, before looking at the shocked face of Rey. "What've you found, darling?"

"Did you just teleport?" Rey asked.

"Yep, like I said. It's apparition. Something I learned when I was a teenager," Harry explained, sheepishly grinning at her girlfriend. "Seriously though, what'd you find?"

"Look," Rey said, gesturing at a small obelisk they were standing by. Harry knelt down and looked at it more closely.

Shmi Skywalker Lars
Beloved Wife and Mother
450 - 500

On the gravemarker was a small symbol, Harry didn't quite recognize it, but she figured it had something to do with the late woman's religion, or something. The last name, however…

"Skywalker?" Harry questioned. "Isn't that your uncle's last name?"

"Yes," Ben murmured, looking confused. "Is… is this my great-grandmother?"

"We could find out," Harry offered, gripping the hilt of her lightsaber in her hand. She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. She didn't like doing this, but… sometimes needs must. She thought of the name of the woman on the grave before them. She reached for Ben with her magic and used his connection to her as a means of bolstering her attempt to summon this woman.

She twisted the lightsaber in her hand, pushing her magic down on the stone inside.

She felt a cool breeze on her face, and opened her eyes to see an ethereal form beginning to take shape, and a pensive-looking woman with dark eyes and dark hair appeared before them– the woman, Harry reasoned, must be Shmi Skywalker Lars.

"Who are you?" Shmi asked, uncertain. "Where am I?"

"Shmi Skywalker," Harry began. "My name is Harry Potter, and these are my friends. Her name is Rey, and his name is Ben Solo."

"You're my great-grandmother," Ben piped up, earning a surprised look from Shmi.

"You're… Ani's grandson?" she said softly, floating over to Ben and gently placing her ghostly hand on his face. "How long have I been gone?"

"If your gravemarker is any indication, Madame Skywalker," Rey said softly. "Forty-six years have passed since your death."

"Forty-six years?" Shmi asked, surprised, before she looked at Harry. "Why did you call me here?"

"Madame Skywalker," Harry began. "How… how did you die?"

Shmi blinked and her lips turned to a soft frown. "I… was gathering mushrooms from the vaporators. They're a good source of nutrients on a planet where not much grows," she began, smirking slightly before it was replaced by an impassive frown. "It was a Tusken ambush. They… captured me and tortured me for well over a month. I am not a doctor, but I mostly likely died from a mixture of starvation and blood loss, if I had to guess."

"Do you remember anything specific about the circumstances around your death? Like… who was with you at the time?"

Shmi looked at Harry for a few moments before she hummed. "Ani was with me as I… passed on," she said hauntingly. "Ani was so beside himself with grief. I… knew that he would hurt after I was gone, but I'm hoping that someone, like Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan or Padmé looked after him after I was gone."

"Who are they?" Harry asked.

"They're the ones who freed him," Shmi said softly, her eyes sad and worn.

Shmi Skywalker had turned out to be a treasure trove of potentially useful information. The woman had been guarded, closed off at first, even with Ben saying he was her great-grandson. However, she had warmed to them enough for her to eventually give them leads on at the very least, the backstory of Ben's grandfather.

Harry thought about what she had shared, and felt a lingering numbness in her limbs. Qui-Gon Jinn had told her that her son was The Chosen One. The one to balance 'The Force' and create peace. Destined to greatness.

How many times in her life had she heard that damn same concept over and over again? Only for it to cause unfathomable amounts of suffering? How she loathed men like Qui-Gon Jinn. Yet another Dumbledore, putting all his faith in prophecies that have no business existing. She idly wished she could have saved Anakin from his fate, but…

'Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time, Harry…'

"Harry, are you alright? You've got that look on your face again," Rey asked, earning a surprised snort from the universe-displaced witch.

"Not… entirely alright," Harry responded with a scowl. "Anakin Skywalker, prophecied Chosen One, according to his mother. Taken from slavery and brought up as a Jedi. But she doesn't know all about what he got up to, or what his ultimate fate was. We know who he became, but the question becomes who would know how he got there?"

"Master Tano would, but she hasn't visited the Temple in years," Ben chimed in. "She never spoke about grandfather though. She often said the memories were too painful. Uncle knows about grandfather as the Lord of the Sith that he was but…"

"What about the people she mentioned?" Harry asked. "The ones who freed your grandfather."

"Obi-Wan Kenobi was my uncle's first Jedi master, he died almost thirty years ago," Ben said, rubbing his neck. "I don't know who Qui-Gon Jinn is, though and Padmé… if she means Padmé Amidala…"

"Ooh! She was the Senator for Naboo during the Clone Wars!" Rey chimed in, grinning. "I've seen practically every speech she ever gave! She's one of my heroes, you know."

"She wasn't just the Senator, she was also at one point their Queen," Ben added. "She's also my grandmother, and her mausoleum is on Naboo, not far from the capital of Theed. We could go there, and you could summon her spirit?" he asked, directing his question to Harry.

Harry opened her mouth to respond, only to stop when the comm she'd been given by Maz began to chirp. Looking at it and fumbling with it for a second, she managed to activate it, and smoothed her expression out when the diminutive orange woman appeared before her.

"Harry Potter," she said dryly.

"Maz," Harry responded evenly. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"When you have the time, visit me on Takodana. I've found some interesting information that might be of use to your young girlfriend."

"Have you found anything on Sirius?" Harry asked, eyebrows raised.

"Not yet, but I'm still searching. As well, I have something I might need you to do, if you're so inclined. Come visit me, and I'll explain more. Maz out."

The hologram disappeared, and Harry sighed. "I think we should probably stop at Takodana first before proceeding to Naboo– Maz seems like a powerful woman, and I wouldn't want to leave her waiting. Besides, I'd want to at least see if we can find more information about your grandfather without waking the dead unnecessarily."

"Why not just go to Naboo and ask-"

"Ben, next time you're happily sleeping in your bunk, thumb in your mouth mumbling about something completely stupid, I'm going to wake you up in a way that will be most unpleasant. That way you'll know just how irritating it is to be called up from the dead to answer some teenager's questions about his xenocidal grandfather," Harry pointed out, poking her finger into Ben's chest. "Now shut it."

Ben merely scowled, and Harry sighed and turned towards the horizon, rubbing her face in irritation.

Their trip back to what passed for civilization in the dunes of Tatooine had been blissfully brief, but as they entered Mos Espa, Rey had spoken up.

"While we're here, I think we should try to find some of the stuff we need to fully kit the Marauder," she suggested from behind Harry. "It'd be cheaper than if we went into the Inner Rim or Core, and with your magic, we might actually get some interesting gear for the cost of scrap."

"Not a bad idea," Harry hummed. "You trust my magic enough for that?"

"It isn't like you'd be repairing life support systems or anything. Droids are much more resilient to accidents and if something goes completely wrong, we're far less likely to all suffer catastrophic deaths as a result," Rey said, eyebrow raised.

"Cheeky," Harry muttered. "Alright, we'll do some shopping, I guess."

After poking around and looking into where they could get themselves some proper scrapped droids or something like it, they ended up towards the slaver-controlled side of the town at a slightly run-down looking scrap shop. The sign out front had "Wald's Parts" written in the strange Latin-adjacent alphabet that this galaxy tended to use.

Harry was only slightly perturbed by the person standing behind the counter. A green-skinned humanoid-ish-type being with a protruding mouth and solid black bug eyes. The… alien, as best as Harry could describe it, looked up at them and spoke in a throaty register.

"What you want?" he asked warily.

Rey stepped forward to the counter. "We're looking for a scrapped astromech droid– along with other possible military-grade scrap you might have laying around."

"What you want with all that kind of junk?" the alien asked.

"A scrapper knows the value of junk is more than merely trash," Rey responded. "You make your way out to Jakku often?"

"Once or twice– Plutt no like it when we crowd on his territory," the alien responded with a huff. "Karking sleemo."

"You might have better luck these days," Rey said with a smirk. "My good friend over took care of quite a number on his goons. I have quite some experience with the assortment of things you can take from an old Imperial cruiser."

The alien made a noise of approval before his eyes followed over to where Harry and Ben were standing. He startled and shook his head. "You bring jedaii here?" he said pointedly to Rey. "You either very stupid or very daring, lady."

"Why would it matter if I brought a Jedi here or not?" Rey asked smoothly, eyebrow raised.

"Bad omen, jedaii," the alien said, shaking his head. "Old friend of mine, he become jedaii, friend die in Clone Wars."

"I'm so sorry," Rey murmured. "You were good friends with him?"

"We work together here, before jedaii come take him away," the alien recalled wistfully. "Never see him again after that. Know his son lived here too, but not hear until much later. Pull off biggest scam ever, rip off seventeen landowners selling ruins of family farm. Escape wrath of Hutts. I hear later friend's son and friends kill Jabba."

"Wait," Ben said suddenly. "Your friend's son and friends? Was your friend's name Skywalker?"

The alien seemed to brighten at the mention of that name. "Ah-ha! Skywalker! Yes! Ani good friend of mine!"

"Either Magic has decided we should run into everyone your grandfather ever knew, or we're just incredibly lucky. Knowing how my life usually goes, I think Magic is just throwing us a bone," Harry commented dryly.

"Not no much more about Ani after jedaii take him," the alien shook his head. "We only children at time."

"Well, we certainly appreciate your help, Mr… Wald?" Harry inquired, earning a nod from the older alien.

"Let me check stock," Wald responded with a wink. "Better you leave immediately, though. Bad men no like jedaii, no like newcomers either."

"We'll keep that in mind," Harry murmured, furrowing her brow. She might have to put off her anti-slavery crusade off until she had more firepower. It was far more difficult to single-handedly create a slave uprising if the entire planet's authoritative body was stirred up like a nest of acromantula.

Wald returned moments later with a couple boxes worth of parts in his hands.

"Ah, any you speak Huttese? Basic hard to speak. Old habits," Wald asked apologetically.

Rey then started speaking to Wald in the guttural language, causing Harry to frown.

"Huttese?" she asked Ben, who blinked.

"Right, you… wouldn't know it– I don't know much of it either, really," Ben explained. "While Galactic Basic is quite common– and you seem to speak it with perfect fluency, it is not the only language in the galaxy at large. For instance, my mother and I are both fluent in Aldera."

"Aldera?"

Ben slipped into something that sounded like it had distinct Italian and Slavic tones. "That was Aldera," he then said, shaking his head. "It was, at one time, the language of Alderaan. Unfortunately…"

"Alderaan is nothing more than spacedust now, because the Empire blew it up," Harry finished his sentence for him, earning a nod from Ben.

"Damnit, Hermione was right," Harry acknowledged with a grumble. "I'll have to try brewing that experimental potion recipe she gave me."

"Experimental- what would something like that do?"

"Theoretically speaking," Harry said sharply. "It would allow us to share our literacy and fluency in other languages. You lot would probably be able to speak the languages I speak, and vice versa. So, Rey and I would both learn Aldera, you and I would learn Huttese, and you two would learn a couple of languages, like Welsh and Tamil."

"Welsh? Tamil?" Ben asked.

"Two languages from my planet," Harry explained. "It's sort of long-winded but the gist of it is that Earth has something like five or six-thousand different languages across the entire planet; Welsh is a dying language in my homeland, while Tamil is one of the many languages spoken in the continent of Asia. I have some atlases back on the ship if you're curious about it."

"I… I think I might like that," Ben said with a nod. "You think this potion thing of yours would do that?"

"Hermione never got around to testing it before I went through the Veil, but she seemed rather confident about the whole thing," Harry said with a wave of her hand. "She wouldn't have given it to me if she wasn't sure it would work though."

"We'll have to go through some of the boxes once we get back to the ship," Rey said as she walked over from where she had been conversing with Wald. "I got a bunch of things for relatively good prices, all things considered. Harry, can you shrink this down until we get back to the ship?"

"Sure," Harry murmured. She drew the Elder Wand and shrank the boxes down to a smaller size before tucking them into her pocket. "What all did you manage to get?"

"At least two droids, I know at least one of them is an older pre-Imperial astromech, the other… Wald wasn't certain, just that it was in a sort of shoddy state of repair. Might be worth taking a look to see if we can salvage it into something else."

"Indeed," Harry said with a quirk of her lips.