Harry Potter and the Dark Lord of the Sith

Chapter 5.

Harry flew up. He kept going higher and higher. The chamber seemed to be roofless as well as bottomless. He stopped his ascent and hovered. The only sounds were loud echoes from blaster fire far below.

"There's one of them!" a voice shouted. Harry turned and saw another side corridor, out of which stormtroopers were shooting him. He dodged the bolts, pulled out his wand, and stunned the lead soldier. How many of them are there? he thought, as he resumed his ascent.

Looking behind, he saw that the imperials had brought up another machine-gun blaster. Still too tired to hold the shield charm again for more than a few seconds, Harry suddenly got the urge to rush the stormtroopers and chase after them into the corridor. Bad idea, he stopped himself. I'll likely get lost in this station. Instead, just as the imperials were aiming the blaster at him, he dived past them.

He expected the stormtroopers below to have left the chamber, but he had no such luck. They were there and they were ready. "Protego!" Harry said, before the bolts flew towards him. The shield charm was much weaker than the one he cast before, but it held out. But Harry knew he wouldn't last long just standing there.

"Expecto Patronum!" he incanted. The stag emerged out of his wand and flew towards the imperials. They fired at it, without effect. Leaving their rapid-fire blaster behind, they ran away. Harry and the Patronus followed. He kept to the main corridor, even though stormtroopers ran off into side passages, in order to be able to find his way back.

Harry turned and his mouth flew open. About twenty stormtroopers stood a hundred feet away. Behind them, large gray doors were coming together to close the corridor. Harry gauged the size of the opening and quickly decided that he would be able to make it through. He leaned forward on his Firebolt and, like a rocket, rushed for the exit over the heads of the imperial squad.

It was too late, and Harry realized it as soon as he passed over the heads of the imperial soldiers. The opening had narrowed too much for even someone as small as Harry to slip through. He yanked up on his broomstick, applying the break charm, and at the same time turned around to face the stormtroopers. He glanced at the door. The end of the Firebolt was less than an inch away from it.

Less than five feet from him, the stormtroopers were so surprised that it took them more than five seconds to start leveling their rifles on Harry. He reacted without thinking. Whipping out his wand, he yelled, "Stupefy!" and the stormtrooper right in front of him fell. Before the squad closed ranks, Harry rushed through the gap and headed back towards the tall shaft. The door towards that end of the corridor was also closing, but this time, Harry made it through. "...en the blast doors!" he heard behind him, before the pursuit was cut off by the pursuers themselves.

Back at the shaft, Harry pondered for a moment which way to go. Something warned him against following Leia, Luke, and Hermione. Trusting to his feelings, he instead headed into the corridor one level below, where Luke and Leia came from. After quickly flying through several intersections and finding no one, Harry came to a dead end. Well, it wasn't quite that. Harry got off his broomstick and headed for the small door at the end of the corridor. He hit a button on the wall nearby.

A smell nastier than anything he ever encountered in Potions class hit him. The room ahead of him was dimly lit, about three stories high, and full of garbage and dirty water. Strange noises were coming out of the water. Harry squeezed his own nose to avoid the smell, backed up and closed the door. He took a few deep breaths to get the offensive odor out of his lungs.

Getting back on his Firebolt, he lifted off and slowly headed back up the corridor, wand at the ready. This time, he looked carefully for another way out. In the next hallway, Harry had to curse himself for simply speeding past here on his way from the shaft. On his left was a large window, and behind the window, below, his friends, Han, Chewie, Leia, and Luke were staring off to the side at something Harry couldn't see. They stood in front of a... thing that Harry presumed was the ship they planned to get away on. His first thought was, What a piece of junk.

"Incendio!" Harry said, aiming his wand at the glass. The beam of blue fire had no effect whatsoever. He stopped the spell, regretted he didn't have Luke's 'lightsaber' or whatever that was called, and thought. Suddenly, he heard some booted food make a step nearby. He jumped, aimed his wand, and stunned the stormtrooper just as the imperial came around. Loud shouts were heard coming down the corridor.

They're coming, raced through his mind. Suddenly a very old memory crept up. He remembered his cousin Dudley's eleventh birthday, and how Dudley ended up in the snake cage instead of the snake. Harry got in a lot of trouble for that. Now, however, he looked at the window and smiled. He didn't know the exact spell, or even if there was one, but he hoped that something a completely untrained wizard could do inadvertently would not pose a problem for a seventh year Hogwarts student to accomplish deliberately. He concentrated, swung his wand...

The glass vanished. Just as the stormtroopers ran into the room, Harry flew through the window on his broomstick. The soldiers aimed their weapons at him. Harry looked back, and was caught totally by surprise.

The glass was back, and the stormtroopers were lowering their rifles in confusion.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted as he landed. "You're all right!"

But then, Harry's scar began to hurt. "Are you okay?" asked Ron, with a look of worry.

Despite the pain, Harry looked up to where everyone else stared. He saw an old man, in a brown robe, holding a lightsaber, like Luke's, with a blue blade. With that lightsaber, he was fighting a black-clad, black-caped, black-helmeted figure, which held a red lightsaber. Then, the old man raised his blade, holding it vertically. What's he doing? Harry thought. You can't fight in that position.

The black figure raised its own saber and sliced through the old man. And then...the lightsaber fell into empty robes. There was no body.

The black figure kicked the robes with his boot several times, and then looked up at them. The pain in Harry's scar became almost unbearable. It started walking towards them. Then, Luke hit a control panel on the door, closing it, with the figure--Harry was certain now that it was some sort of dark wizard--left behind. Everyone rushed into the ship. Luke came last, shooting at the stormtroopers even as the ramp was going up.

When the ship lifted off, Harry collapsed from exhaust.