Harry Potter, The Jedi That Would Not Die
Chapter 11 – Lightsaber Crystal
The journey to the Unknown Regions took a few days, while Ilum might not have been anywhere near as far into the Unknown Regions as Earth was it was still well out of the way of most casual space travellers.
Despite what their masters might have thought, both Hermione and Harry had been planning the design of their lightsabers for over a month and had both been spending some time in the Lightsaber Construction Room in the Temple assembling their designs albeit without the all important crystals. As was typical of most padawans, Harry designing his after his masters blade. Harry's was a relatively simple black and silver hilt with a larger activation switch and a thinning of the design just below the emitter. Hermione's was virtually the same thickness along its length, was also black and silver though unlike Harry's which included both black and silver metal, hers was all silver metal with an alternative black animal hide material for the grip which they observed was fairly similar in design to Master Qui-Gon's, her Masters design was not really appropriate for her lightsaber as it was designed for someone with three large digits per hand rather than ten small ones.
Both of the young apprentices quite enjoyed constructing their lightsabers, Hermione had designed hers to be the most efficient weapon possible and had tweaked it for a higher energy output, whereas Harry had designed his for the feel and use, this also affected how both intended to search for the right crystals for their blades. Hermione wanted the most flawless crystal she could find, the colour was less important, Harry though had been studying the information on crystals and wanted the one that 'felt' right.
By the time they arrived on the planet Ilum, which was a bitterly cold place and required the wearing of several layers of clothing, especially for both the padawans Masters who were both from warmer worlds, as a result both the padawans volunteered to go out by themselves and find the crystals they wanted, they knew their Masters could find them if they needed to.
"The caves are this way Harry," Hermione instructed, gesturing to the young padawan who was following more slowly behind her, Hermione's excitement was so great that she had even wanted to try out a Force assisted landing by jumping out of the ship before they landed, but as they had not worked on this yet their Masters stopped her.
It also occurred to Harry at this point that the reason they probably had not been shown this yet was because they would then naturally use this when exercising which would take some of the strain off their bodies and would enable them to exercises faster and for longer. Their Masters probably wanted their bodies trained up to the correct level without the assistance of the Force before they started working on enhancing their abilities.
Hermione rapidly led them to the cave which was easily lit by the hundreds of luminescent crystals that sprouted out from the walls and created dagger like structures throughout the high cave, even the top of the spiral slope that led to the highest point of the cave was visible in hues of green, blue, yellow and occasionally purple. As soon as they entered Hermione began examining every crystal in site, Harry on the other hand moved towards the centre of the cave and closed his eyes, well aware that Hermione would not even notice he was gone.
Stretching out with the Force he could feel the crystals around him, many of them reacted with the Force and aided a Jedi during their use. Harry did not know exactly what it was that he looked for but he knew he wanted it to be special. As he reached out he could easily feel the hundreds upon hundreds of crystals projecting from the walls, some bright, some dim, others very small, some very large, but most were like each other, not what he wanted for his lightsaber. He continued to feel as he opened his eyes and made his way up the spiral slope, he could hear the dripping of melting snow and ice and the gentle rustling of small animals around him in the cave but he tuned them out, only interested in that perfect crystal that he knew was there somewhere nearby.
He reached the top of the large cave and started along one of the walkways into a tunnel mounted high in the ceiling of the caves. Walking along he soon left the metal walk way and began trekking over large boulders and other obstacles. He seemed to have been walking for hours, the tunnel thinning and widening all the time, showing some rarer sorts of crystals.
The passage split several times but by this time Harry was almost solely relying on the Force for navigation, he knew which way he had to go, after getting to the point where he had to crawl for several meters over an obstacle he got to a dead end and thought he had taken a wrong turning. Dropping into the Force again, he tried to sense which way he should go and his sense still told him that he needed to continue forward, he was so close now, maybe only a matter of feet ahead of him.
Deciding on his course of action Harry drew his training lightsaber from his side where it resided beside the currently empty shell of his own lightsaber, he had discovered that every time he was doing nothing he would subconsciously reach for it and run his hand over the hilt, feeling the shape of it in his hand, it was his, this is what he had built, this was his life now.
Activating the training blade he plunged it into the wall, he had to leave it there a lot longer than he would with a normal lightsaber because of the lack of power in the blade. He created a nice large gap around where he thought the crystals he wanted as he completed. Returning the lightsaber to his belt he then drew his wand.
"Accio rock," the rock shuddered and he heard a crack as the back of the cut out separated from the rest of the wall. "Accio rock," he tried again, the rock moved out crookedly about an inch. He repeated this several times until the slab fell out and hit the floor with a bang, sending up dust particles that clouded his vision and filled his lungs for a couple of minutes.
When he could see again he crawled into the cut out rectangle which was at least a meter square and equally deep. He was so close; they cannot have been more than inches away. Drawing the lightsaber again he pushed it into the wall just an inch before the pressure was taken off the end of it. He expanded the hole until he could get his arm through and after putting his training lightsaber back on his waist he looked through the small hole.
Inside was a small natural chamber, only about and three feet square, but at the centre of which was a formation of crystals. Unlike every other he had seen today they were perfectly clear and seemed to shine a whitish light and were just what he was looking for, these were the crystals he was after.
Expanding the hole further, he reached in and taking the tools he had been given to cut the crystals, separated the foot square formation from the floor. Pulling it back through the hole he made his way back through the tunnels until he found himself back on the metal gantry that led back to the spiral slope.
Raising his wrist he spoke into his communications device.
"Hermione its Harry, I've found my crystals."
#So have I Harry, where are you?#
"I'm at the top of the cavern, I had to go quite far to get my crystals, and they're beautiful."
#Come down Harry, I had a call from our Masters about a minute ago after they were unable to contact you, we are needed on Mandalore earlier than we thought, we will need to prepare our crystals on route rather than in these caves.#
"I must have been too deep into the mountain for the signal to have gotten to me; I'll be right down,"
It took Harry only a few minutes to descend the slope where he found Hermione running her hands over a series if yellow crystals in her lap. As soon as she saw him she jumped to her feet and was about to speak before she saw his clear crystals and stopped dead, almost dropping her own crystals in the process.
"Harry...Are those...Are those pontite?"
"I...don't know," he replied slowly as she carefully put down her own crystals and started examining his own.
"Why did you bring the whole formation rather than just a couple of crystals?"
"I thought I might make another lightsaber after this one," he replied. "Besides, it allows me to get it wrong a couple of times."
"They are really rare Harry," Hermione explained. "Yours should be a really beautiful blade."
"Let's hide them when we get back to the ship, leave our masters guessing until we are ready."
"Should we do that?" asked Hermione, looking us for the first time since seeing his crystals.
"Why not, unless they demand to see them we might as well keep them hidden, it will probably take the rest of the trip to get the crystals ready for lightsaber use anyway."
"That's true. Ok Harry, shall we go?"
It took them a bit longer to get back than it did to get there. Their masters were both curious to see what sort of crystals they had but the padawans hid them (and shrunk them in Harry's case) under their thermal clothing until they could hide them onboard, telling their masters that it would be a surprise. They soon set off and set a course for Mandalore, but the trip there would not be spent resting, the couple of days it would take to get to the Mandalorian System would be spent in deep meditation for the two padawans as they prepared their newly collected crystals for use in a lightsaber. They would spend the better part of the next few days sitting cross-legged in their cabins focusing intently on the crystals in front of them, imbuing them with the Force and compressing them into the right shape for use in a lightsaber.
After a quick bite to eat and a short powernap Harry prepared himself for the process. He had more than enough crystal to create a standard lightsaber, in fact he had even more than he needed for the additional modification he wanted to make to it by making it a bifurcating cyclical-ignition pulse lightsaber, which was a really long way of saying that it would work underwater rather than just short out the second he dropped it in a pond. Sitting down in his cabin he picked out two crystals from the formation he had collected and cut them to roughly even shapes, then placing them on the floor in front of him he settled down for a long time meditating and began to chant.
"The crystal is the heart of the blade, the heart is the crystal of the Jedi, the Jedi is the crystal of the Force, the Force is the blade of the heart, all are intertwined, the crystal, the blade, the Jedi, we are one. The crystal is the heart of the blade, the heart is the crystal..."
Voldemort staggered out of the forest in Harry's mind and collapsed on the grass, it had taken him months to break free of the spiders clutches, he was just glad that Potter did not feel the need to check on the individual defences of his mind during that time or that he had not instructed the spiders to kill as he would have been defenceless in either case.
After resting for several hours he thought he would try finding a safe place to wait and recuperate for a bit before attempting to battle his way to the heart of Potter's mind in his weakened state. Looking around he spotted the willow tree that defended the entrance to what Wormtail had described as a tunnel outside the schools wards. Thinking it was probably his best bet he made his way over to the tree and after one gash across his face discovered that it was just as dangerous as its real life counterpart, thankfully he knew how to disable it and quickly made his way into the tunnel underneath it, as soon as he was there he collapsed to the floor in exhaustion, it would take him a long time to recuperate his strength, but one thing that Lord Voldemort was good at was waiting, but at least he was safe.
No sooner had he thought this when he heard a pair of growls and a bellow from further down the tunnel. Almost dreading what he would see he half turned and saw a stag, a large black dog and a werewolf snarling and scratching the ground and looking decidedly threatening.
Not again, was his last thought for a while as the beasts charged him.
They were only a few hours out from their destination when Harry finished his crystals and decided they were ready for use in his lightsaber, he checked them over several times before he thought he should risk it, he had heard Hermione in the room opposite finish hers about six hours earlier and rush off to show her Master, now it was his turn.
Breathing deeply he took his new lightsaber from his waist and using the Force disassembled it in the air in front of him and raised the crystals and closes his eyes.
"The crystal is the heart of the blade," he placed the crystals in alignment at the heart of the structure. "The heart is the crystal of the Jedi," he slid the power field conductor, the diatium power cell and the power insulator on behind the crystal mounts. "The Jedi is the crystal of the Force," The cycling field energisers and the energy gate went on around an in front of the crystals. "The Force is the blade of the heart," the blade emitter, stabilisation ring and the energy modulation circuits went on. "All are intertwined, the crystal, the blade, the Jedi," with a satisfying click the parts came and fused together as a complete lightsaber for the first time, only a Force-user would be able to unseal his lightsaber now. "We are one."
Standing his knew lightsaber floats to his hand, it's reassuringly heavy in his palm, he checks it's all sealed together well and after one final check he held it upright in front of him and pressed the switch.
The nice reassuring sound of an activating lightsaber met his ears and he opened his eyes to see the silvery white blade in front of him. His lightsaber, now he could consider himself a real Jedi, no Jedi was complete without a lightsaber and now he had his.
AUTHOR'S ESSAY: Thank you Agnar for pointing out my mistake in the last chapter, Magical Earth does have more than one sentient species, I completely forgot about Goblins, Merpeople, Veela etc. I have since corrected this oversight in the last chapter. If anyone else spots any mistakes like this please let me know.
Regarding the ideas people have been sending me for animagus forms, several of those mentioned were on my list of possibilities, you guys really like the zillo beast don't you, it must have been mentioned by at least three different people, the only problem I see with this is that having read up on animagi, that the form is a reflection of the persons inner self based on the animals that each person is familiar with which is why Witches and Wizards all turn into Earth based animals, and while Harry and Hermione are both going to now be familiar with many many galactic species, the zillo beast does not become known to anyone outside of the Dugs of Malastare as anything other than a legend until 22BBY which is over 20 years away at the moment so Harry and Hermione, probably Harry because if either of them would become a zillo it would be him, would not be able to become a animagus until he was at least 34 so the zillo is not really viable chronologically I'm afraid. I think I have my final ideas now, but as nothing has been written with them in yet the floor is still open to suggestion.