One late rainy morning in September, heavy rain droplets were falling against the old window frames. The weather was matching her brooding mood perfectly and she continued watching the rain droplets hitting the window and running down the glass. It was her first day at school and she had looked forward to this day for ages. Especially since her last disastrous birthday. But now that it had finally arrived it was not what she had imagined. Remus had told her that she would learn many new things in school, but so far they had not even begun learning anything new. The friendly elderly brown haired teacher had welcomed them in school and asked them to tell her their names. She had then proceeded to tick off their names of her list and handed them a nameplate for their desk. Afterwards she had handed out some paper and asked them to draw their family and pets so that they could talk about it later, but Harriet didn't want to draw, especially not about her family. She was not in the mood for drawing and one hour for drawing her family was simply not nearly enough time. She wanted to learn something. Which books would they read? Would they be allowed to write their own stories? She loved writing and inventing stories. They helped her to cast her mind far away. But her teacher had just laughed at her eager questions.
A gentle hand touched her right shoulder and Harriet jumped before she realized that it was her teacher.
"You are not drawing?" her teacher inquired gently and Harriet shook her head shyly.
"I don't want to draw. Alex is drawing our family anyway, so I don't see why I should draw it too because it's redundant" The elder woman smiled amused, looked back to her brother, swat down next to Harriet and whispered. "Do you want to draw something else?"
But Harriet shook her head again. "I'm not in the mood for drawing because I'm not inspired." she whispered back.
"Inspired?" Her teacher chuckled whispering back. "What would you like to do instead?" she asked.
"Maybe read or… could I write something?" she asked eagerly.
"You can read and write already?" her teacher asked with a surprised look on her face.
Harriet nodded. "Since I was three years old." she answered smiling proudly straightening her back.
"Really." Teacher asked taking a pencil out of her pencil case and writing on her white paper sheet and now it was Harriet's turn to chuckle.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK?
WHAT WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT BOOK YOU HAVE EVER READ?
"Can you answer these questions? Write your answers below the questions." her teacher ordered her gently and Harriet complied by starting to writing her answers in cursive under the questions.
I don't have one favourite book, because there are so many to choose from. My favourite books are the Sherlock Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings novels by Tolkien, Books about Greek , Roman and Nordic Legends, and …
"I can't list all of my favourite books on one sheet." Harriet stated hesitantly biting her lower lip. Her teacher looked at her sheet with wide eyes.
"Does the second question include non fictional books?"
"Of course…" her teacher trailed of clearly thinking about something else.
"Mrs Sharpbeard" she heared her brother whine as he clearly did not like her getting more attention than him.
"Just raise your hand when you are finished." told her patting her shoulder twice and limped towards Alexander. But unfortunately for Harriet her teacher was too busy keeping the rest of the class in check afterwards that she did not see her raised hand.
When the signal for the long awaited pause rang she remembered her order and asked Harriet to stay behind.
"You're in trouble now." Her brother happily chanted using his sing song voice.
She carefully stood up and brought her sheet towards her teacher's desk and calmly told her that she had been bored and handed it to Mrs. Sharpbeard whose legs gave way and she plumbed into her chair. Not only had she answered the questions writing one page each, but also had randomly selected a number with five digits and multiplied it several times until she had reached x20 and divided it until she reached the first number again on a second sheet.
"Harriet, I'm afraid that you need to get tested." Her teacher leaned back taking a deep breath.
Harriet turned pale and stepped back. "No, please I don't want that. I just want to learn something new."
"No. You misunderstand. None of the other children can read or write yet." she conveyed. "Can your brother"
"No!" Harriet exclaimed angrily stomping her foot. "He can't!" Her teacher looked startled at her and explained.
"What I meant with testing is that we need to know how advanced you are so that we can put you in the appropriate class, which is your you'll get bored"
"Away from Alexander?!" Harriet's asked hopefully and her teacher frowned. Something was off about the two siblings.
"If your level is above his, then yes." she answered.
Hours later.
Lily and James came to pick up their children from their first school day but were surprised when Alexander's teacher told them that she needed to talk to them. When Lily heard that it was not about her son, but about her daughter she huffed angrily.
"What has she done now?" she asked crossing her arms while James stared angrily at her.
"She has done nothing to worry about Mrs. Potter."Mrs. Sharpbeard smiled ignoring the obvious tension towards her pupil for the moment. "But she needs to be tested and placed into a class appropriate for her level."
"So we enrolled her too early?" James asked. "Even primary school is too difficult for her. Is that it? It's the first day for Merl … God's sake."
"She always was a trouble maker. So it's not surprising." Lily concurred. Alexander standing behind his parents not knowing what was going on smirked, but Harriet fought hard against her gathering tears and felt a sharp familiar ache above her heart.
"Let me stop your ranting right there." Mrs. Sharpbeard stopped them sharply. "Yes, children can be trouble makers, but for many different reasons. Each child is different, but your daughter is anything but stupid. From what I've observed today, she is very observant, tidy, diligent, sensitive and most importantly: Far above the level of other pupils. Can your son read and write?"
"No, of course he can't, yet" her mother exclaimed. "That's why we sent him here so that he could learn it."
"Well, your daughter can and do at least basic calculus." the elder lady informed them and pulled out Harriet's sheets from earlier, which her father snatched out of her hand. Harriet paled, felt her heartbeat accelerate and force herself to breathe. What would her parents do? What they finally acknowledge that she could do something better than her brother? Would they be proud of her? She hoped so. But deep in her heart she already knew the answer.
"That's impossible." James murmured his gaze sweeping over the sheets of paper. "That isn't hers."
"It was written by her. I saw it with my own eyes." the teacher answered
"Who thought you how to do this?" Lily hissed making Harriet and her teacher jump. She wanted to tell her parents that Remus had taught her after she had begged him and the basics of calculus and with Fidji, one of the houself's help she had advanced further. But telling them about Remus' help would only strain their friendship with the werewolf further and he currently needed his friends more than anyone else. So she kept her mouth shut and murmured shuffling her right foot. "No one." Her mother huffed annoyed, but it seemed that the teacher was not so easily fooled.
"If you would sign here please then she could be tested tomorrow morning and we would have the results by midday." she almost pleaded with a short glance at the forlorn looking girl.
The result the next day had surprised not only her parents, but also several other personnel in her school district.
Sitting in the small, narrow room with ten simple small black and grey workstations for personnel to write reports, she diligently tipped her report about the happenings leading to the shuttle incident. It was not hard for her to remember as she simply described what she had stored in her memory. She just needed to mentally walk through her memory again and she could provide the exact time she had addressed the shuttle, how long it had taken the shuttle to report, the exact time she had informed her superior ensign and his response. Checking the word count she hoped to not have provided unnecessary information. To make sure she mentally repeated Grice's Maxims of conversation in her mind and checked her report.
In terms of quantity she had tried to be as informative as possible and to provide as much information as needed and no more. The maxim of quality was valid as well as she had provided correct information which could be backed up by her log. The maxim of relation was also invoked as she never strayed from things that were relevant. Reading a fourth time through her report she acknowledged that she also had minded the maxim of manner and tried to be as brief and orderly as possible and she had avoided obscurity and ambiguity. And she had even been able to check her spelling. Basic was not a very difficult language, but like her native language, the spelling diverted from the spoken word in some cases.
Checking her chronometer she signed her report and sent it off to the Grand Admiral, an hour before her deadline. She also had still an hour until her physical and two hours to her physical combat training assessment. Maybe she should go and get a new haircut first as she was unsure if she could hide her long hair during the two evaluations to come. Just as she was about to log out of this station she halted and decided to find out if she could get access to the language training files. She knew Aurebesh, but was itching to learn something new and challenging. But everything she tried it came back restricted. Even the languages. They were protected by simple binary codes and she needed permission from her direct superior to get access to them.
No! She was close to banging her head on the desk. There was no chance that would ask something from Ensign Mayr. He would deny her the possibility to learn, especially as she had thrown him in front of the metaphorical bus. But he would have done the same. This was about survival. But those were binary codes, which could be sliced easily. Should she risk it? On the one hand she should keep her head down, but on the other hand her brain was starved and she desperately wanted to learn a new language.
Harry cracked her knuckles, took a glance to the door and straightened. She would do it. No turning back. She opened a subroutine panel on the holo screen which displayed the protective binary code and singled out the routine code which blocked her from getting access to the languages and erased it and replaced it by the code routine of an ensign. She had learned in the academy to distinguish the codes of the different ranks and it served her purpose now. Two seconds later her log confirmed her access to the languages and brought a happy smile to her face.
Browsing the language log she could barely contain her excitement. More than 3000 languages and dialects were listed. More than enough for her. Glancing at her chronometer she cursed. She still had half an hour until her physical and she should get a haircut beforehand. But if she had to walk all the way to the elevator and back, she would never make it in time. She was alone in the dataroom and she had her wand hidden in her left arm sleeve. Technically she could magically cut her hair, but unfortunately this was not a spell she was very familiar with and she did not want to run around bald headed. She could apparate. But what if the ISB had secret cameras installed? They most likely had some in here. They would realize that she was not entirely normal and she had no desire to meet with an inquisitor. She stood up and drew magic from her magical core in her solar plexus and carefully and barely recognizably moved her left arm while focusing the word "nox" in her mind. And to her delight all the lights in the room went out, leaving her in complete darkness. She stumbled as she felt her feet give way which indicated that she seemed to have drawn a bit too much magic. A second wave with her arm and mentally picturing her destination she felt the familiar pull at the navel and the familiar chaotic whirlwind of apparition until she landed on her feet, but in complete darkness. The dizziness was overwhelming and she stumbled and hit her head possibly on a durasteel wall. Had she blacked out the entire ship?! The dizziness slowly evaporated and she felt a bit faint, but that was impossible wasn't it?
"Finite incatatem" she murmured sheepishly and to her shock all the lights went back on and she was indeed on the floor she wanted to be.
A few meters down the corridor she ran into the person she was looking for, but she could sense the hectic frenzy, which all of a sudden was all around her. Commands were shouted, white clad troopers were running down the corridors in perfect formation and the siren for battle station was droning above her head.
"Got surprised by the dark too?" the bald man a clone wars veteran asked her and she just nodded and sadly pointed towards her hair, which had grown long again.
But the elderly man in uniform just laughed heartily again.
"Ah. My Wookie girl is back!"
"I'm not a wookie!" she pouted, but was used to this conversation. "I have my physical in 30 minutes and can't appear without short hair" The sound of the electric shaver made her shudder. She loved her thick, unruly black hair. Although she had inherited it from her much despised father it made her unique. Alexander had inherited their mother's hair colour with their father's unruliness. So Harriet had just dubbed him 'Pumuckl' as he had just been as childishly immature as the German TV show she had once seen at the Dursley's house.
"There I left it a bit longer this time. About 5 centimeters." he laughed again. "If I were you I'd get to the rank of officer as soon as possible. Their naval dress code for haircuts is not as strict as those in your rank." he advised her and she thanked him. Cut my hair every day or lose my soul as an officer. I prefer to cut my hair every day. she thought.
"Generally you are fit for duty, but your Vitamin D levels are slightly lower than usual, you don't drink enough and you have lost 5kg since you've been transferred from the academy.", the blond haired doctor informed her after her physical but Harry only rolled your eyes.
"You are not taking me seriously?" he asked with a stern voice.
"No, but your conclusion was to be expected." she answered. "I lack natural sunlight on my skin to produce Vitamin D, because I'm stuck on this destroyer and there are no artificial contraptions to counteract this. I have twelve hour shifts without being allowed eat, drink or going to the bathroom. In my so called free time I don't really have a possibility to catch up with nutrition because of my sadistic ensign. So, yes. Doctor. It was expected."
"You seem angry, midshipman" he stated unfazed by her rant. "For your information. We do have solar light cabins for officers to prevent Vitamin D deficiency."
"Great. More officers' privileges." Harry huffed rolling her eyes. "For your information, Sir. As you can probably see on the datapad. I'm not an officer. So this information is useless for me."
"I understand that you are a conscript and that you probably despise your service to our empire, but you should show more humility and respect towards officers." he advised her scribbling something on his datapad. "We are not the bad guys."
"In my book, respect needs to be earned and is not given freely, Sir." she responded wondering how far she could go before getting arrested by the ISB. "And just coming from the core regions is not enough to earn my respect, Sir."
He stared at her intently, but with rising colour in his face. "We are finished here. Get out!" he barked angrily turned around and walked away. Apparently she had struck a nerve with this one.
Having changed into black and grey training gear she arrived on the training deck to the assigned panel to wait for her "instructor". The deck, which was located at the lower levels of the destroyer, was naturally swarming of training off-duty troopers and some who were training manoeuvres in their white gear? Why was the armour white anyway? It was unpractical. Harry had never understood that and apparently it did not protect them from anything. Several people were jogging on the running track and she longed to run a few rounds herself. Running always had a meditative effect on her as she was able to think properly during her workout. Especially, when she had her own running music list. She didn't have proper training for a month and it would probably show in her assessment, but she would be able to hold her ground in combat.
"Potter? Potter, Harriet, Is that you?" Harry jumped at the familiar voice which had addressed her in English. She was standing exactly where she was supposed to be for her physical combat training and slowly turned around to a young man in private training gear, which indicated him being a stormtrooper off duty. Recognizing him she groaned. No! One of her brother's best Gryffindor friends or goons, as she had dubbed all his "friends", was coming towards her. How the hell was he even here? The empire couldn't have detected the magical world. Could they have? On the other hand there were whispered rumours of magically gifted personnel under the ominous dark Lord Vader. Whoever he was. Maybe there was some substance to it.
"Longbottom! What in Merlin's name are you doing here!" she inquired in English knowing full well that it was forbidden to use any other language than Aurebesh.
"It is you." he exclaimed happily stopping right in front of her. "Nice to see you."
"Wish I could say the same about you, Longbottom." she snapped. "Does your presence here mean that the empire has finally detected the magical community on Earth?" she asked but was surprised at his answer.
"As far as I know they haven't. But after the Voldemort's second rising grandma and decided to leave the magical world temporarily."
"You are from an old magical family. How could you navigate through the advanced Muggle world?" she asked curiously.
"It was difficult, but we had Hermione to help us out and we also wanted to try a new therapy for my parent's condition. And that was only available in the Muggle world." he explained.
"Hope it worked." she muttered crossing her arms while leaning back towards the cold durasteel wall.
"Not really." he responded sadly. "Well, sometimes they seemed more lucid than usual. And that has not happened once in St. Mungos. So that was a bit of an improvement."
"So why did you not go back once the empire took over." she enquired. He could have slipped back into his familiar world.
"Because my parents had made that marginal improvement and granny didn't want to stop the therapy. We had hoped to get overlooked, but unfortunately I was conscripted. But before that I have played with the idea to join the resistance against the empire."
Harry scoffed and turned her head away from him looking over the deck. Longbottom's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"They were out of their depth without truly knowing their enemy. They managed to down two star destroyers and four light cruisers. And in doing so they doomed Washington, Berlin, Beijing and Moscow. The people of these cities died in the retaliation attacks because they dared to oppose the empire. They are responsible for the end of millions of lives." she whispered remembering her shock at the retaliation attacks. She had felt each of these attacks personally somehow. She had been aware of people's feelings for a while, but this event seemed to have been a catalyst.
Before that moment she had believed that by reading their facial expression she was unconsciously mirroring their emotions, but this theory seemed off now. After it she had had to learn to protect herself from every emotion the people around her were having as she had felt it unfiltered: the cold terror of the people, their anguished pain and then all their different voices had disappeared as if they had never existed leaving a painful hole in the universe. The "resistance" formed of people from all around the world had wanted to get rid of the empire with the help of a growing planet wide rebellion.
She wanted the empire to pay for every atrocity it was committing, but so far there were only rumours about pockets of rebellion and their fleet commander had wiped out the biggest cell in Batonn where civilian casualties had outnumbered the "subversives". Unfortunately she had even felt it when they had died. It had been on her "graduation" day in the academy and she had felt horror, pain and coldness similar to what had happened on her planet, but at that time she had not known where the horrible occurrence had taken place. Would those pockets of rebellion eventually form a real and organized rebellion, but what would be the cost of that? How many innocents would die until then? Would she be able to help that rebellion somehow?
"Rumour has it you were part of it." Longbottom chuckled. "At least they tried. Don't ever think that they are responsible for the deaths. The empire is. Not them." he answered sternly.
"Those are rumours only! Where did you here that" she almost shouted angrily staring at him with blazing eyes.
"We have no other choice than to do as we are told if we want to survive this." Longbottom said with an apologetic look on his face.
"Doesn't mean I have to like it." She huffed. "Especially as more than half of the officers here are incompetent airheads. When I go out, I want to do it on my terms not because of their incompetence."
"Yes, tell me about it. It's even worse among the imperial army." he chuckled seeing more navy and army personnel gather at their meeting point. It seemed that the only person missing was their "instructor".
She needed a change of topic. "So…" she started. "Is it true that you troopers are bad shots?" she asked him in Aurebesh. "The rumours say that troopers are incapable of hitting their target even once. Hope that none of them has one of these alarm clocks where you have to hit the target with a laser pointer to stop it."
The tall young man mock gasped at her seemingly shocked but she could feel his amusement and he stopped himself from laughing out loud.
"How can you ask something offending like that?" a blonde young woman in naval training gear cut in to their conversation. "Imperial troopers are the best shots in the galaxy. Everyone knows that."
"Then where do the rumours come from?" Harry responded addressing the blond woman.
"These lies are spawning from subversives, who want to spread false rumours to weaken our glorious empire." she insisted proudly but trailed off at Harry's knowing smirk.
"Those lies, as you say, can only be spread by living subversives. So how come they are still alive when they had encounters with troopers?" she answered while the woman Harry instantly disliked gaped at her with a fish.
Merlin's pants. Brain to mouth: Shut up! I'm so going to be investigated by the ISB if I continue like this. Harriet thought biting her cheeks.
"Enough. Attention!" their stern middle-aged "instructor" had finally arrived and she got in line to stand attention while waiting for further instructions. This should be interesting. She may be out of training, but she had combat training for some time before the empire conquered her home planet and she planned to get rid of her bottled anger this physical combat evaluation session. And the empire loved rudeness. Please let me fight against the blonde airhead bimbo, who clearly has swallowed every lie of the holo channels or possibly even more.
Commander Eli Vanto entered the antechamber to the Grandadmiral's quarters, which served as his office, training room and sleeping quarters and private gallery. But he knew Thrawn well enough by now to know that the gallery was much more than just art or trophies. Where other officers only saw useless piece of chunk of "primitive" cultures, Thrawn was able to deduce much more about their creators. He had seen it often enough.
He had been present at the interrogation of their daring prisoners which had been able to be captured due to the quick thinking of the young crewman and as expected the tension between her direct superior ensign and her had been blatantly obvious. There were rumours that some of the ensigns had a competition called "cherry picking", which consisted in making newly transferred female conscripts life hell, before showing them "a way out" of their misery. But it seemed that she was one of the very rare few which resisted this power trap.
As he passed through the durasteel doors to Thrawn's office he spotted the tall, Chiss reading a report, sitting relaxed in his black chair with his right hand on his chin.
His eyes turned towards his aide and he turned the screen off.
"Any news on the blackouts?" he asked curiously.
"Yes, and no, Sir." Vanto answered. "The lights in the entire ship went dark, but curiously there was no power failure. Every system was working as efficiently as if the lights were on. It just was dark everywhere. We were also unable to determine the source of problem or its origin. I've ordered a second sweep of the captured shuttle as it is possible that the scanning crew must have overlooked something, which could explain what has happened."
"Mh." Thrawn said unconvinced. "Possible. We will see."
He turned the projector on again and Vanto could see two reports next to each other. One was relatively short, consisting of only two paragraphs. The second one was much longer and definitely more detailed as he could spot several time indicators.
"These are the two reports I requested after today's shuttle incident." Thrawn explained. "Tell me, what those reports tell you about their writers."
Vanto stepped closer and carefully read both. "Well, one of the two is a scatterbrain and the second is overly fond of using the log." he answered after careful examination.
"Yes." Thrawn smiled encouragingly. "Ensign Mayr hasn't risen from his rank without reason, yet Midshipman Potter has not checked her log once to back up her report."
Vanto looked back astonished at the detailed report. "How is this possible? Does she have an eidetic memory?"
"It is possible, but her file did not list anything about it. It may have been overlooked."
No his face changed into a knowing smirk."But, even more interesting is the fact that after sending her report she sliced into the ship's system. Very skilfully, I might add. Had she not sliced for the information on a low level workstation at the same time as her superior was logged in his office, it would have remained undetected."
Vanto gaped surprised. "She did what?! What was she looking for? Should we inform the ISB?"
"Relax, Commander." Thrawn admonished him with a hint of amusement in his voice. "She could have sliced for any information without detection, but she sliced for the training programs. Especially the language courses. She is a conscript and would therefore have needed the permission of her direct superior, Ensign Mayr, to get access to these programs. Her file suggests her having an inquisitive nature and natural curiosity. It seems that she's just bored."
Vanto nodded. He knew that conscripts were often overlooked in the empire's unofficial hierarchy and yet Thrawn had an uncanny gift of spotting rare talents which would usually be left aside. He straightened his shoulders stepping back from the reports. "What do you suggest?"
There was that knowing smile again. "Let's challenge her with Sy Bisti." He suggested.
"But that is not in the training program yet." Vanto answered. Thrawn wanting her to learn Si Bisti suggested that Thrawn had singled her out to become his aide after he (Vanto) would leave for the Chiss Ascendancy. He would probably test her in the next few weeks and decide.
"No, it isn't." Thrawn answered putting his fingertips together.