Merry Christmas!
In a galaxy far, far away...
Not.
On the planet called "Earth" by locals, a young woman of indeterminate age is sitting in a bar that doesn't water down the drinks, they don't ask too many questions, and where no one recognizes the significance of the weapon at her side.
Hell, no one would believe her if she told them she came from a planet several galaxies over in a ship with an actual robot, hyperdrive and the ability to traverse the current known universe in this sector via a wormhole she accidentally flew into.
A wormhole she had her astrodroid map, since she had no intention of staying on this backwater planet any longer than she had to.
It was luck she found that loch people seemed to believe contained a 'legendary monster' that no one had properly photographed. Finding that cave had made parking her ship so much easier...that and the fact that she had the portable hyperdrive firmly parked in orbit around their moon made it child's play for her to hide it from casual observers.
Renting a hotel room was easy. A little abuse of the Force and a distinct lack of morals, and you had a free room that was off the books. Though she only did this in places without cameras where people would be hard pressed to realized they'd just been duped.
She didn't have local currency, never mind identification...and she had always been skilled at misdirection.
The Order might have been full of hidebound dinosaurs...but at least they trained her to the fullest extent they could before their disagreement that lead to her exile.
An exile which, if rumor were true, had saved her life. She knew telling that hidebound Obi Wan twit to shove his lightsaber where the suns didn't shine when he came to ask (read: demand via an official order from YODA) her to return long enough to teach at the Academy so that an older, more respectable Knight could lead clone troops into battle had been a good idea.
She agreed to visit the Academy and evacuate the children if something happened, but she wasn't sticking around. Not after the row she had with Mace Windu over the fact that she would rather chose love over duty.
It was why she had been banished from the Order in the first place. She had fallen for some random male she couldn't even remember the name of now, and had run off to marry him.
Only for him to dump her with some slavers...who got the nasty surprise that she wasn't just another helpless victim. Even without the Force, she had always been an odd duck.
After the fight she had with the Jedi Council over her decision, she decided to cut her losses and became a smuggler. Nothing strictly illegal, but things that would be frowned at on principle. It was actually ironic how easy it was to slip into the smuggler's world...at least once she found a decent one that wouldn't take advantage of her.
All she had to do was ditch the standard Jedi outfit, hide the light saber, and prove she could fight without using the Force as a crutch...and suddenly she was in.
The fact she openly disliked the peace keepers of the galaxy didn't hurt either. While most people saw Jedi with a sort of awe, the smugglers saw them with open annoyance. According to them, Jedi were 'jumped up morons wearing dresses with fancy swords'.
Considering her rose-tinted glasses were removed after she had to live on her own without the Temple to back her up (her pride kept her from going back to ask for help like some) had stripped the view that Jedi were all-knowing and wise, she was inclined to agree.
She had come to realize that a Jedi only looked like some mythical knight filled with wisdom and goodness...when you were looking from the outside in. As a fully trained Jedi Knight who was living on her own without the Temple's help or rules, she found the reality was that everyone seemed to have a misconception of a Jedi when it was much more mundane than you would believe.
The only difference between a Jedi and a guard was the training and the secrecy.
She threw back another shot.
As someone who had lived on the fringes of society successfully despite her lack of normal skills for over ten years, she figured she deserved to cut back and relax where no one knew what a light saber was.
Hell, not even the newly formed EMPIRE came this far out. It was about as remote as you could get, as the only inhabited planet within two galaxies of each other was this one. They hadn't even learned how to make vehicles that could fly, never mind terraform a planet or inter-galactic travel.
Which was perfect considering she needed to lay low after absconding with the padawans back to their parents. She was sure that pissed off the Emperor, after all, he had one of the Knights he had corrupted go in and start a killing spree of the children. She had saved as many as she could, and then when the murderer had left the Temple she had put it on lockdown.
Anakin Skywalker had never been given the special codes because Yoda didn't fully trust him. She, however, had been given them because she agreed to evacuate the children if things went south.
The only way into the Temple was through the secret tunnels she had discovered years ago. Tunnels so old that the Masters had forgotten they existed, if the amount of dust and cobwebs had been any indication. Not even the cleaning droids went as far down as she had.
Besides...she felt totally vindicated in stealing as many of the already made lightsabers as she had before ditching the known galaxies where Jedi were recognized.
When she made it to the hotel room, after ordering some pizza...something she really wished were available back home...she noticed something outside her window.
An avian, that according to her galactic database, was commonly called an "owl".
And if messenger birds were outdated, it was nothing compared to the letter it was carrying.
"Parchment? I thought this backwater place had moved on to digital messaging?" she muttered. The 'phone' she used was highly outdated by her standards, but then again she had been very skilled at learning how to hack into technology once she freed herself from the Temple. They frowned on it, but they couldn't stop her from learning.
The letter was even more confusing.
Witchcraft was a myth. Magic had been either explained away or revealed to be unusual applications of the Force that surrounds life.
Though...there were myths and rumors in the Temple of another Order of the Jedi who delved into the mysteries of the Force. Acts of miracles that couldn't be fully explained. These men and women were so secretive, that even the Jedi Masters didn't talk about them.
From what little Yoda had let slip the one time she asked about them, it was an 'invitation only' Order that was full of eccentric Knights who supposedly went off the grid like she had, except not for the same reasons.
She left for what she thought was love. They left to delve deeper into the Force than was permitted by the Council.
Looking over the missive again, she couldn't fully dismiss it as a prank.
Instead she kept her eyes open and started hitting the heavier population areas in search of places that didn't feel right or fit in with the surrounding area.
She didn't know what a 'Leaky Cauldron' was, but there was some sort of perception field that seemed to make most people pass it by.
If she had known exactly what sort of headache she was about to get from walking into that dirty pub, she would have headed straight for her ship and never looked back.
At first, once hers eyes had adjusted to the lighting, she was deeply unimpressed with it all.
Forget backwards...this place was downright STONE AGE.
Still, the people were polite, if a tad condescending because she was a 'muggleborn', and she was able to enter the "alley" with very little problems.
However it was when she visited the bank to see if any of her jewels were considered valuable here that the first headache began.
Apparently her blood was a match for a 'Dead' vault, or at least one put on the watch list for the bankers.
She had seen weirder. Frankly she was just glad that her knowledge of languages matched up to the spoken one in the area she dropped down in.
She followed the "goblin" deeper into the bank, looking very bored and hoping this wasn't a complete waste of time.
"Okay, so let me get this straight. I'm apparently a match to someone called 'Potter', despite the fact this is my first time here. Enough so that the 'wards' around the bank alerted you the second I stepped one foot into the place," she said patiently.
If this really was a case of mistaken identity she would only rob the vaults of half the coin, exchange it for currency she could recognize in the galaxy she had lived in, and then wait for the place to cool down so she could hopefully buy a proper ship with a full hyperdrive.
To be perfectly fair, she had no idea where she came from. She, like most of the Padawans who went into the Jedi Order, had been taken at a very young age so they wouldn't "contaminate" the potential knights with ideals and religions from the outer planets. Anakin was actually the oldest candidate in recent history, being found so late in life.
Somehow she didn't think it was entirely HIS fault that he went rogue. A Sith could be very persuasive...especially if they had a weakness that was easily exploited.
It didn't mean she forgave him for the crimes of killing all those children, just that she understood why it happened.
However she was one of the few Knights that had no known Origin planet. Generally it meant that her home planet was from the very fringes, or the one who found her didn't want her birth parents known to avoid giving the child preferential treatment. Or worse, being singled out for her parents crimes.
In her case it was because she was found somewhere in the vicinity of the Temple with no one coming forward to claim the discovery or her origins.
So...it was possible she was this Potter kid they were talking about.
Or her blood just happened to share enough of the same genes as the Potter kid.
Easy enough to find out.
She went through the test they brought forth...and imagine her shock when it started to give her entire family tree down from her name to her extended family.
Astra Stardancer (Chrysanthemum Jade Potter).
"...It's official. I'm never going by my birth name EVER."
Who the hell names a kid Chrysanthemum?! Astra was at least respectable, and she had to pick her own last name after she was kicked out.
What followed was a whirlwind of paperwork that had her hand cramping for hours. At least paperwork couldn't be hacked.
She walked out of the bank with a sore hand, a new key to her vaults (apparently since she was clearly over 17 she got to access the entire thing and not the trust vault)...only to find a lot of official people there to get a glimpse at the "missing Potter girl".
Astra had never been so glad that time moved differently between wormholes as she did after seeing the sheep trying to either impress or browbeat the 'girl-who-lived'.
She was able to walk out of the bank more or less unscathed and head to the 'wand makers' shop. Just because she had no interest in catering to their idiocy didn't mean she was going to half-ass it.
She planned to learn as much as she could and leave the first chance she had.
Her next headache came from the wand maker. Apparently the only one that came close was one that was a 'brother' to the wand that caused so much devastation in Europe.
She didn't know who "You-Know-Who" was, and frankly she didn't care. All she knew was that she had to get a custom because none of the ones in the shop suited her.
The final headache came when someone finally cleared up the misconception about her actual age.
That was when she met Albus Dumbledore. She was not impressed. She had once argued with Master YODA and while she lost the argument he still made a more impressive figure even if he was much, much shorter.
"So let me get this straight. You want me to TEACH at your school in order to avoid being saddled with some hag that's more interested in politics than she is about teaching children. You also expect me to follow your word because you're some great leader in this backwater place and you want me to meet my parent's friends, never mind that I have absolutely no desire to know this 'Lily and James Potter' and have already established a life without it," she said slowly.
Again, Dumbledore wasn't nearly as intimidating as an angry Yoda.
Dumbledore decided to switch tactics.
"I can pay you double the current salary and it comes with automatic tenure," he said.
Astra thought that over.
"Fine, but I want full control over my class. Most of the books I saw in Diagon were poorly written and filled with too much propaganda for my tastes," she said.
"Find a book that is suitable for children under seventeen and I'll see to that you're reimbursed for changing them so late," he promised.
"When do you want me to start?"
"You can move in immediately, and school starts on September the first."
"...How many days is that?"
"In about ten days," he answered.
"I'll be at the castle in two," she replied.
It took her hours to narrow down a book she felt could work that wasn't full of the 'pure blood' bullshit as she liked to call it. Ironically it was one of the only accepted books written BY a muggleborn who left because he was tired of all the bias.
With that done she went to the loch and got her ship. If she was going to be spending months in a castle made of stone she wanted an escape route that couldn't be followed.
She was situated in 'Hogwarts' two days after the weird society first made contact with her.
Again, if she had known the migraines it was going to spawn she would have left soon after she found her home planet. Some things weren't worth the price.