A/N: Welcome. This is something that I'll write when I feel, so don't expect consistent updates. Do expect epic shit.

Penumbral: of or pertaining to the penumbra, the subtle secondary shadow created by a large light source or multiple light sources, the shadow between darkness and light.

~penumbral~

GrS 13:5:16, Coruscant.

"Fett failed." The robed figure turned slightly, and the crackling blue image focused in on his face, which held an obvious displeasure. "It is your task now."

"Of course, Dooku," said a man sitting with his feet propped up on a table. "I think I don't need to say I told you so. And this time, I get paid."

"Naturally. My underlings were perhaps a bit uncharitable the last time around."

"And in full!" said the man as the connection closed.

~penumbral~

Classified, Classified.

"How do you defeat a Jedi?" asked a dark, armored figure. "How do you capture, kill, or beat him?"

The Count rolled his eyes. "I do not think I am the one who needs to be schooled on this subject, Mortem."

"Ah," said the man. "But how many Jedi have you fought?"

"More than you, at any rate."

"True, true, but only in a certain sense. But regardless, humor me."

The Count sat, his robes billowing out before him as he gestured to the other man to do the same. "I have only so much time to give."

"The question has intrigued criminals, bounty hunters, revenge-seekers, and killers alike - how to do it?"

~penumbral~

GrS 13:5:17, Coruscant.

Throngs of people passed the pair with nary a glance - though that was the work of the man, who casually walked towards the departure section of the spaceport with a Galactic Senator by his side. After stopping to buy provisions for their journey to Naboo, Anakin had subtly used his powers in a compulsion which directed people's attentions away from them. It worked unsurprisingly well: the precaution not only stopped snooping passerby who could recognize Padmé's face but also potential assassins. The only possible people who could detect them were Force-wielding assassins, which were all Sith. And since not even the Jedi Council knew the details of their travel arrangements, only the final destination, they were safe.

~penumbral~

"This is an enemy who can influence the fabric of reality. An enemy who can trick the keenest of minds, the most thoughtful of intellectuals."

~penumbral~

As they approached the gangway to the ship - not a luxury liner by any measure but comfortable enough -, Anakin flashed a pair of tickets on his holocomm, breaking the compulsion temporarily. As a portly Weequay checked, he sensed a foreign presence - but it wasn't malicious, so much as... he wasn't quite sure. That worried him, but not unduly, and as Padmé grasped his arm lightly and asked, "What's wrong?" he shook his head and muttered an excuse.

From there they ascended into the ship and took their seats, waiting idly for the ship to take off.

~penumbral~

"A being who can sense the faintest of threats, the slightest hint of betrayal. She can detect your secret malice."

"Not always," said the Count. "And not consistently."

"The first rule is to assume competence, my friend," said the man.

~penumbral~

As they waited, Anakin watched the spaceport through the window, silently watching people move even as he felt their presences shift through the Force. Something stirred in the air, but he just couldn't tell what. After some minutes of waiting, the ship's engines hummed and lifted it upwards, before it shot off - no, he was being generous - before it lumbered towards the sky.

The ship had barely cleared the top of the highest skyscraper before the engines increased their humming, in time with a warning coming from the Force. As he jumped up, the whine increased beyond hearing, and a trio of Bith in the background began clutching their domed heads.

~penumbral~

"Beyond that, you must be dispassionate. It cannot be out of anger that you defeat a Jedi."

"I disagree, having seen a hateful being easily and deftly defeat countless Jedi."

"Perhaps. But for the likes of you and me - no. Your master?"

The Count rose in apprehension. "I am not sure what you are implying -"

"You are not the one pulling the strings, Dooku. Even Fett's son knows this. There is a man - woman? - more powerful than you, controlling your actions. I do not care.

"So with an excess of anger the Jedi will detect you and neutralize you."

~penumbral~

Then one engine exploded, causing the ship to careen dangerously to one side. Anakin ran up to the pilot's cabin, abandoning all pretense of being an ordinary traveler on holiday, and banged on the door. "Official Jedi business!"

A tall Twi'lek male accosted him, pushing him aside. "Many claim to be Jedi, human. They never are."

Sighing, Anakin summoned his lightsaber from its belt, unsheathed it, and cut off the door's locking mechanism with a flick of his hand. The Twi'lek goggled as Anakin kicked down the door.

"Out! Out!"

Inside, alarms buzzed and blared, red and yellow lights flashing all over the place. Several numbers displayed in bright fonts were steadily decreasing by the second.

~penumbral~

"Then, you assault him. You immerse him in danger - but not too much -, and allow him to be a hero. A savior. Jedi are always willing to risk their missions to save the day."

"If there's one thing you said with which I cannot agree more," said the Count, "it is this. They claim to follow reason, uninfluenced by passion or emotion, but they cannot resist it. It makes them predictable."

"And how else to defeat a man than to first know his moves, his go-to strategy?"

~penumbral~

The pilots ran out of the cockpit without complaint, leaving Anakin to take over the controls; unfortunately for him, just then they sparked and fizzled, the lights dying out.

"Blast!"

He took hold of the controls nonetheless, right as the ship hit the side of a residential apartment and began to grind its way towards Coruscant's dirty underbelly.

He pulled the joystick backwards and the ship halted its downwards turn. Two taps to flashing red buttons diverted power to the remaining engines, and the ship jerked, then unsteadily rose, leaning towards one side. Most of the alarms halted their incessant wail.

~penumbral~

"You attack him again and again, and wear him down. He starts to make mistakes."

"But never enough and never in time. Many have tried this strategy. Many have failed," admonished the Count.

~penumbral~

He noticed, among the flashing displays, a countdown drop to one, and in the fresh silence in the cockpit, a lone tick distinguished itself, resounding across the room.

"Blasted -" He barrelled out of the cockpit, and caught a glimpse of Padmé's worried face across the ship.

Then the front of the ship exploded.

It propelled him towards the back, and he grabbed Padmé and jumped through the reinforced glass window, striking it in a circle with his lightsaber and pushing it with the Force to weaken it.

~penumbral~

"Of course, but that is because they - those failed others - have no vision. You need a secret weapon, an ace in the hole."

The Count pursed his lips thoughtfully, and sat back down. "The Force will work. A Sith assassin, I am sure you know, got the better of one of the senior Jedi nearly a decade ago. They both perished - but to kill a Jedi master? Then, it was unthinkable."

~penumbral~

The fragments of glass flew down towards Coruscant's deep abyss, but Anakin closed his eyes and simply felt.

He could feel Padmé close and warm against him, of course, but he tried not let that distract him. He could also sense the bustle of traffic below him - even though a major accident was occurring right above them, the citizens of Coruscant were always busy and, as long as their precious cars weren't hit by debris, did not care to stop to gawk the sight.

With the right amount of pull and timing augmented by the Force, he landed in the back of some poor soul's car, cushioning Padmé with his body and the Force.

She flushed, then got up and shakily sat down. The man in front, who had slowed his vehicle to a halt, turned around, probably to admonish them, never mind their near-death experience.

Well, if Anakin could say so himself, they were never in danger of dying. Just laceration and bruising was all.

"Official Jedi business," he said tiredly, gesturing to his still-active lightsaber. He deactivated it, noticing that it was scoring the car's smooth leather finish. Mutilating it, actually.

~penumbral~

"You need a trick or two to pull it off. Skill. Precision. Or, failing that, timing."

~penumbral~

That was when the man drew a gun and fired, just as the sense of wrongness which had been on the corner of Anakin's mind for half an hour now suddenly burst into the fore; Anakin drew his lightsaber in a flash to defend against the point-blank shot, but it was too little and too late as he realized Padmé was the target. Of course.

Red overcame his vision. He jumped towards the man, no thoughts of disarming or capture in mind - he thrust his blade forward with a yell, and... nothing.

He watched the man's figure as it fell through the sky. The kriffing bastard had jumped. No jetpack, no parachute, nothing. Anakin had a split-second decision to make.

He rushed back to Padmé, who had a dart stuck in her neck, pumping her full of something - very likely the same poison that had been in those insects the changeling bounty hunter had released. Then he activated his holocomm with a repeating emergency broadcast - Obi-Wan would receive it up and inform the Council. Unless there was another assassin lurking around, Padmé would be safe.

And besides, he needed the extra information. Three assassination attempts within a span of days - and one succeeded, except she wasn't dead, only in some sort of coma.

After a few mental calculations - he should be able to slow down from terminal velocity easily with the Force, he reckoned -, he turned and jumped in after the assassin.

~penumbral~

"And you make your weapons untraceable." The armored man held up a lone dart to the light.

"Not, as far as I can tell, matching any Outer Rim designs," noted the Count.

The man wrinkled his face behind the visor. "That's more of Fett's style. No, this is a standard Corellian dart. But unlike the darts of some low-game smuggler, one of these even brushes you and you won't wake up."

"Ever?"

"Until I want you to."

The Count scoffed. "The power of the Force -"

"Sure, sure. But against non-Jedi, it works fine."

"I am no Jedi."

"And here I was, sitting here, thinking I was able to kill you. As just described. No, you're not a Jedi, Count Dooku. But you have the Force."

Count Dooku smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. Then he got up from his seat. "Unfortunately for you, Mr. Black, you have not received the job. Ten thousand credits could be better spent paying some janitor's wages, and besides, Fett offered to do it for less." The Count's smile broadened slightly at the man's reaction: he twitched, but did not object to Dooku's casual use of the man's real name - or the insult, for that matter. So his sources were accurate. That was reassuring to know; before this, the man's identity had been a veritable fortress - as if he had, before two years ago, simply never existed.

But Count Dooku always found a way.

"You're staying with Fett, then? Give me a call when he fails."

"Fett never fails."

The man scoffed under his dark red mask. "And here I was, thinking that you were intelligent, that you'd earned the privilege of learning my real name."

That, evidently, was enough to shock the Count.

"All the money in the Confederacy didn't tell you that little nugget of information, did it? I'm not Sirius Black and I'm certainly not Mortem. There's a lot about the galaxy that you simply. Don't. Know."

With that, Harry Potter sauntered casually out of the room.

~penumbral~

After stowing away his dart-gun, Harry had noticed almost immediately that the Jedi - Skywalker, if he remembered correctly - had jumped after him.

The bastard had jumped. No jetpack, no parachute, nothing.

It was admittedly impressive, the confidence in the Force and Jedi powers required to make such a decision.

It was also foolish; had Harry actually wanted to kill the Senator, he would have had another man lurking above, waiting for the pair to separate.

Well, Harry supposed that if he wanted to kill the Senator, he would already have won. No, Dooku only wanted incapacitation. But if he ever wanted the Senator to wake up again, he'd be facing a surprise fee. After all, Harry had a monopoly on antidotes to the Draught of Living Death.

As he grinned from the thought, he evaluated his options. He could Apparate away, but he'd rather not reveal all his cards to the Jedi, even if Skywalker assumed he had a cloaking device. The problem was, Harry actually did have a cloaking device, and would rather nobody suspect - even for the wrong reasons - that he had one.

With his left hand he drew a repeating blaster from its holster and fired a stream of rounds at Skywalker. His right hand, of course, always grasped his wand.

The Jedi twisted in the air, dodging the first volley, and then drew his lightsaber in mid-air to parry the next.

Harry cursed as he avoided the scattering bolts.

Skywalker was becoming a nuisance, he decided, as the Jedi streamlined his body and shot towards Harry. But the Count had been very specific in his orders.

Harry decided to beat a hasty retreat as Skywalker neared blade-range.

"Arresto Momentum!" He poured power into the muttered charm, nearly bringing himself to a halt in the air. Skywalker shot past, and then Harry canceled the charm and allowed himself to fall now that Skywalker couldn't reach him.

"Accio speeder!" Far below, he could see the glimmer of headlights casting an ethereal glow into the fog. These grew closer and closer, until the speeder emerged from the abyss.

The strain on his waning control grew greater as the speeder came closer; he had essentially lifted a hundred-pound speeder miles in barely half a minute, which was quite naturally hard to maintain while free-falling and avoiding a murderous Jedi simultaneously.

"I need a remote control," he muttered to himself, as the speeder passed Skywalker.

And then the blasted Jedi carved his precious vehicle in half.

"Shit!" But surface damage could be easily remedied.

"Reparo!"

He cast when the smoldering parts of the speeder grew level with him, and then jumped onto the reassembling machine. Unfortunately, his hasty charm could not fix all of the scoring damage performed by the lightsaber - burn damage was one of the hidden weaknesses of the repairing charm. Nonetheless, the speeder turned on when he pushed the controls, and rose in the air.

Skywalker yelled expletives far below when he realized Harry had repaired the speeder and as the man shot off into the sky.

~penumbral~

Harry's tête-à-tête with Skywalker, unfortunately, had taken a little too long. As he neared the car where he had shot the Senator - and it had been a masterful stroke indeed to summon Skywalker towards his car -, sirens began to blare.

He noticed a lightly bearded Jedi in the back of the car, bent over the Senator Amidala, as five ships bearing massive guns descended around him.

"Coruscant Security Force! In the name of the Galactic Republic and the Senate, we order you to drop the weapon and stand down. You have five seconds to comply."

Harry debated the relative merit of Apparating away, jumping back in after Skywalker, or staying where he was, and decided that he didn't want to reveal too many cards of his own.

Instead, temporary submission might in fact prove the best approach. He slipped his wand into his invisible mokeskin pouch as he dropped the repeating blaster, raising his hands in the air.

After all, his weapons could be replaced, but an all-expense-paid trip into the bowels of the Jedi Temple? That was too good an opportunity to pass up.

"No need to shoot. I surrender."

Obi-wan Kenobi smiled grimly, and stood up. "Then I take you into custody of the Jedi Order."

~penumbral~

A/N: If you ever enjoyed a chapter or even a single idea I wrote, please do leave a review stating why. It helps. And if you find flaws in the chapter - typos, grammatical mistakes, potential plot holes -, do not hesitate to inform me via review as well! And if you wish to flame, go ahead. It's your time you're wasting, and it's comedic gold for me.

Edit: I decided to add dates and times when a scene is first introduced and wherever else it is unclear to reduce ambiguity; understand that, especially later, these may not align with canon dates. Nor will events later on follow canon - feel free to ding me if I'm too compliant -, but themes may appear.