Jedi Master Fay frowns as she meditates between a rare natural phenomenon, and a raging waterfall. The phenomenon is a waterfall pouring from a crack in the rock above the ledge she's sat on that has zero turbulence as it passes through a gap in the floor to the river below. The planet she's on is an uncharted oddity that is in a stable, perfectly circular, orbit around a black hole. The light from the accretion disk replacing that of a sun. Mere minutes spent here will see days pass in the wider galaxy. By some quirk of nature, or possibly engineering, the entire planet is a void in the force from outside its orbit, while inside the orbit it glows like a sun in the sky.
Nearby, on the more solid ledge of the mountain, is a nanny droid looking after the two clones the force near demanded that she commission. Both of them babies just over a year old with none of the learning chips that are routinely installed to interface with the accelerated learning machines. Her gaze strays over to the two babies, one a boy made with the same template as the clones another Jedi Master had already commissioned. The other cloned from her own cells.
"Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."
Fay's head whips around to look at the waterfall at the deep base voice that has spoken so slowly. Instead of a fall of mirror smooth water she is instead looking down a garden path at street of homes designed for easy access to ground vehicles.
Beside a low wall a human woman wearing square glasses, an emerald cloak, and clothes in an unfamiliar fashion asks just as quickly, "How did you know it was me?"
As her hand is reaching for one of the dedicated recording devices she keeps on her, an old human with both hip length silver hair and beard, wearing a purple cloak over some sort of lime green robes. Her eyes dart up to his face, and the half-moon spectacles sitting on his long hooked nose as he answers, "My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."
Fay clicks the recording device on and carefully puts the device on the floor as the woman slowly shakes her head and says, "You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day."
Shaking her head, Fay takes out a large comm device that looks like nothing more than a flat metal slab with some grooves carved into it, and unfurls the screen from the top before linking the recording device and her ship's general computer together. Her eyebrows rise as she realises that this isn't just a force vision, the recording device is capturing the same things that she's seeing. With that realisation she sets the computer to trying to identify the language while she instead studies the image she can see while the two humans talk.
Standing up, she takes a couple of paces from one side to the other before grimacing as she realises that she can see more as her angle changes, obviously this is a portal, not just a force vision. Grimacing, she adds the feed from the comm device to the recording and carefully moves both herself and the device to different sides of the portal so that she has the best possible view on the otherside.
A while later, a three wheeled ground vehicle drops out of the sky onto the road. A giant of a near human steps off carrying an incongruously small blue bundle in his arms.
Dumbfounded, Fay watches as the old human takes the bundle from the giant and places it in front of the portal. Inside the bundle Fay can see the face of a human baby. As she's staring at the child, the old man does something that makes the pillars on the street light up, and then just vanishes.
Suddenly the force screams at her to do something as the portal begins to mist over. Darting forward with force aided speed, Fay puts one foot through the portal and leans down to pick up the baby off the doorstep, her comm device dropping to the concrete step with a clunk as she does so.
As she forces herself to step back through the portal Fay grits her teeth as it feels like she's been torn in two. A moment later, both feet are back on the same side of the portal, along with the baby. A couple of seconds later the alignment of the planet and the black hole has shifted enough that the falling water is no longer glass smooth, instead it is full of turbulence.
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Lily's eyes flick open in surprise at waking up, and she can't help the yelp of surprise as she slaps herself in the face rather than just gently touching her face. A moment later she starts to scream as a giant metal head leans over her.
As she screams, a human woman with elfin ears walks over and picks her up, before cradling her in both arms. Lily's cry cuts off in surprise when she raises her hand to ward off the giant, and she sees how stubby and unformed it is.
"What the hell?"
The woman holding her smiles as she says something in an alien language that Lily can still understand, "Thank the force that worked."
Rather intelligently, Lily says "Huh?"
The woman continues, "Though I didn't know you were so developed."
"What are you talking about?"
The woman turns Lily to face the bed she was lifted from. There she can see Harry sleeping beside a baby that looks deformed. Pointing at Harry the woman says, "You were both possessing that baby. I fear the other soul is too dark to survive."
Lily reaches her hand out towards Harry, "Harry!"
The woman smiles, "Is that his name? It's nice. My name is Fay."
Lily nods, "Lily Potter, where are we?" Her expression turns sour, "Scratch that, where's the bathroom…" Before she turns bright red, "Nevermind, I need to be cleaned."
Fay turns away from the bed with good humour, "We are on my star ship, which itself is on an unnamed planet orbiting a black hole, in an unknown star system of the Unknown Regions."
Lily concentrates on processing that information as she suffers the indignity of having her nappy changed.
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As the screwdriver lifts off of the floor in front of her, Lily pushes herself to her feet and starts to dance with joy, "I did it! I did it!"
From her own place, where she's playing with a 3 year old Harry and some stuffed animals, Fay smiles, "You did well in reaching for the force."
Lily shakes her head before falling over, "Ow! Stupid body. That wasn't the force, that was wandless magic. The same thing that's allowing me to stay sane in this body."
Fay shakes her head at the familiar territory, "There is no such thing as magic. I could feel you reaching for the force."
Lily sticks her tongue out, "No I wasn't, I was reaching in for my magic. If I had my wand I'd be able to easily prove it to you. Stupid half remembered occlumency exercises."
With a smile, and eliciting a fit of giggles from Harry, Fay levitates the stuffed animals and has them start dancing together, "It was the force. If you accept my guidance, then I can teach you how to access it as easily as I do."
Lily rolls her eyes, and falls over again, before pointing at one of the toys and screwing her eyes up in concentration. A moment later the toy turns purple and Harry claps his hands in happiness, "It's magic, and if you accept my guidance then I can teach you how to use it without a wand. Oh Merlin that was tiring."
With a smile Fay stands up and picks up Lily, "First of all, let's get you to bed before you pass out on the floor. Afterwards we can teach each other, and try to persuade each other through the results rather than with words."
Lily nods as she fights to keep her eyes open.
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Five standard years after she picked up Harry, and two local years after the same event. Fay and Lily are sat under the same waterfall along with a battery of sensors and drones.
From her position on Fay's lap, Lily grimaces at the collected technological devices. The grimaces is for just how quickly she's got used to their presence and operation. Something that she can only put down to her young body.
Above her, Fay says, "Lily, I believe it's starting."
Lily turns her attention from the floating devices to the turbulent water of the mini waterfall as the main waterfall behind them lessens in intensity. As the two of them watch, the turbulence of the water smooths out, until it's like looking at a pane of glass. After several minutes, there's not even the occasional ripple in the water, and suddenly it seems to mist over and a scene that Lily's seen far too many times appears between one blink and the next. That of the front garden outside Privet Drive at night.
Seconds later, Lily bursts into tears as the memories of being turned away from Tunie's house after yet another attempt at reconciliation failed.
As Fay holds her tightly, a scouting drone zips through the curtain of water, without crashing into the wall behind it, before zipping upwards into the sky followed by a second drone. They will be heading to what Fay called the Lagrange points on opposite sides of the planet, before deploying solar panels and monitoring the EM spectrum and Hyperspace communications from the planet.
"Lily, are you alright?"
Lily sobs, "Yes Fay, I'll be fine. Privet drive just has lots of sad memories. Mum died of cancer while I was in my 7th year at school, and Tunie never forgave me for 'letting her die'. Dad died a few years later when Death Eaters found out where I used to live, and then it turned to hate. I tried to apologise, to reconcile, anything to get my sister back, but she kept turning me away."
Fay nods, "Such is the way of the heart. Accept that this has happened, and let it go. That was then, this is now, and we live in now."
Lily sniffs, "I know. I thought I'd already put it in the past. But these things can still catch you unawares."
"And provide a path to the darkside if you're not careful."
Lily rolls her eyes, and her head, "You keep saying that."
Fay looks down at her new datapad when it beeps, "It seems that the probes have detected a timing signal from your planet. Though the only hyperspace signals they can currently detect are coming from this portal. Looking at this, the other side of the portal is behaving like it's moving at 96.8% of the speed of light. This gravity from the black hole above us is at 90% of the speed of light."
Lily looks up and slaps her hand onto Fay's cheek, "Fay, you know I don't understand that stuff yet."
Fay kisses the hand gently, "For every 10 years you spend on this world, around 22 years would occur in the wider galaxy, and for every 10 years in your world nearly 40 years would pass in the wider galaxy."
"So why isn't the portal open all the time?"
"That, Lily, is why we sent the droids through, and why we're leaving sensors here."
Tipping Lily's face up so she's looking at Fay, Fay asks, "Better question, why aren't you asking me to go home?"
Lily sighs and looks wistfully back at the portal, "I don't know if it's safe. I don't mean the portal, as you've obviously stepped through so it's survivable. But my community, the magicals, we were in a civil war when I was killed by the leader. Your recording says that my last ditch defence killed Voldemort, but that thing… Fay, when I said I delved into dark magic I meant it. I think I know what Voldemort did and that's why a bit of him survived in Harry. Sirius, one of our friends, helped me with some of the books from the Black library, until James told him what I was doing. Then he cut me off. There's a dark ritual called the horcrux ritual that allows you to attain a form of immortality at the cost of an innocent life. It works by splitting your soul and placing part of it into an object. After James forced me through the cleansing ritual three times three times, I developed a ritual that would grant someone else a form of immortality for as long as my soul remained on this side of the veil. Rather than murder, it required a willing sacrifice. If we went back, Harry would be unprotected because you used to the force to remove the possessions."
Fay nods, "I'm not going to apologise for that."
Lily shakes her head, "I wouldn't ask you to. I'd much rather watch him grow up and be part of his life, even if his father can't be here."
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Open yourself up to the force and let it guide you."
Tentatively Lily reaches out to the magic surrounding her, only to recoil at the oily feeling, "You know what? No, I'm not letting that stuff inside me. It feels disgusting."
Fay looks at Lily with mild censure, "Lily, I have been practising your instructions. This is how you use the force."
Lily shakes her head, "Fay, it feels oily, like I did after experimenting with Dark magic when I was looking for ways to save us from Voldemort. I'm not going to feel like that again, especially after James force me to use a cleansing ritual from the Potter Grimoire once he found out what I'd been doing. I know you want to start teaching this to Harry too, but I'm not going to allow it if it means letting that in."
Fay's eyebrows furrow as she looks up at her student, "What do you mean?"
A 5 year old Lily sighs, "Dark magic leaves a taint on the soul. I don't mean magic that the Ministry of Magic deems dark, I mean actual dark magic. Magic to do with manipulating souls and dominating them. In our world, most of the dark magic was performed through rituals because it took too much time to do it with just your wand. That's why rituals were banned by the Ministry despite the fact that the only way to rid yourself of the taint of dark magic was also through a ritual. It was also the only way to bind familiars too. Knowing what I know now, I can't say they were wrong to ban them, as there are far more dark uses for rituals than there are light."
Fay cocks her head, "What does the taint do?"
"In small amounts, virtually nothing. You're more likely to make morally questionable decisions, your negative traits are slightly amplified, that sort of thing. Once you start gaining more taint, it begins to bleed over to your body. Red or yellow eyes is a classic symptom, but far from the only symptom."
Fay nods, "It sounds like falling to the darkside."
Lily nods, "Yes, I remember all of those warnings you've been preaching at me before you let me even try this step. Same as all the meditation."
"Indeed."
"Right, well how about this. You're starting to come along with symbolic magic and Arithmancy. My occlumency is finally good enough that I can remember that ritual properly. I'll need the help of a droid to draw out the array, as I don't yet have the coordination needed to do it. We'll also need to mix a pound of silver, um, around 453 grams, into a gallon of water, that's around 4.54 litres. If I remember right, one millilitre is one gram."
Fay raises an eyebrow, "Silver?"
Lily nods, "It's partially symbolic, because silver purifies things. A lot of magic works like that. There's a lot of words and chanting that traditionally go with the ritual, but it's really there to ensure that you're doing things at the right rate, which is every seven seconds while you're pushing your magic into the array. If you're doing it right, then each cup of water will turn black until there's no more taint to remove. It will also feel like someone's taken a grater to your skin, and then rubbed salt into the wounds."
A couple of days later, Fay is looking doubtfully at the engraved circle that's been laser cut into the floor of the cargo hold, that of two equilateral triangles at 180 degrees to each other. The lines have then been filled with pure silver and polished down to lay flush with the floor. Drawn into the spaces between the lines are a series of different glyphs that will direct the 'magic' into the ritual. In the central hexagon is a simple bucket with a ladle full of water that is impossibly holding silver in suspension. Something that Lily prepared for her under the supervision of a droid.
With a sigh, she drops the simple robe she wore after she used the sonic shower and steps into the circle. With a gasp she steps out of the circle again as the ever present feeling of the unifying force was stripped from her, which makes the bucket of water even more impossible. Taking a deep breath, she steps back into the circle where she has only herself and the living force for company.
From the arms of a nanny droid, an exhausted Lily asks, "Are you ok Fay?"
Fay settles down on the cold floor in the centre of the hexagon that lies at the centre of the ritual circle, "I will be fine. It was just a surprise."
Lily nods, "I activated the circle while you were in the shower as this is your first time doing magic."
"I cannot feel the unifying force in here, only the living force."
Lily sounds surprised when she says, "That's the first time you've mentioned a difference."
Fay looks out of the circle as she moves the bucket around, "I'm sure I've mentioned it before."
Lily shakes her head, "Nope. Merlin knows our conversations would have been easier if you had. This circle is a seal, it is designed to keep things in or out. In this ritual it is designed to keep things out so that the only thing inside the circle is you and your magic. I've taught D12 the chant I used, so whenever you're ready to start you can begin to pour water over your shoulders."
With a serene expression, Fay lifts the ladle and pours the water over her shoulder. As she does the droid starts to chant and Fay has to tear her eyes away from the black sludge that rolled down her chest as her hand dips back into the bucket with a slight tremor. By the third ladle full her hand is visibly shaking, and by the 10th she's leaving more water in the bucket than she's successfully spilling over herself.
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Fay wakes up with a groan in her own bed. A moment later there's a cry of "Mama!" and Harry has jumped onto her belly.
Turning her head weakly, she looks down at the floor of her cabin, and Lily who says, "He came in halfway through your when you started to scream. I told him that you were sick and this was part of your medicine."
Fay opens herself up to the force for a moment, and then quickly leans over the bed as she dry heaves. As she does, Harry looks at her in concern, "Mama are you sick?"
Breathing heavily, Fay nods, "Yes, I'm unwell. I'll be better soon."
Lily looks at her knowingly as the nanny droid hands Fay a cup of water, "I did say no magic for 3 days after the ritual, didn't I."
Fay carefully sips from the water before nodding, "You did, sithspit that was horrible."
Harry bops Fay on the nose, "You said a naughty word."
Shifting awkwardly into a sitting position, Fay looks down at Harry, "I did, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done."
Harry hugs Fay, "That's ok, you're sick mama. Just get better so that you can look after baby mummy and me."
Lily sighs at her own appellation, but smiles anyway, "That's what we were doing. But it's like when you broke your arm and we had to make it straight again. Mama needs to do her medicine twice more, the next one is in three days. Until then she's not allowed to use the force. Can you look after her until then?"
Harry nods seriously and wags his finger in Fay's face, "No using the force until you've finished your medicine."
Fay shoots Lily a look before looking down at Harry, "I promise I won't use the force until I've finished my medicine. But we will be travelling to another planet while I do, as I've felt the discordance in the force growing, and I don't want us to be caught unawares."
Harry jumps up and down beside Fay, "Can we go to Coruscant. Can we go to Coruscant?"
Fay shakes her head, "No Harry, we can't go to Coruscant. There's something wrong there, but I don't know what. How about we go to Queyta, it's out of the way and the Skakoan people are quite nice. If you're willing to wear a pressure suit, we could even visit the inside of one of their cities."