Harry Potter

and the

Way of the Jedi

Author's Note: This is not a true crossover, but more of an AU kind of story. It's Harry Potter with a Jedi twist, but no actual Jedi and no star ships, no actual lightsabers, and nothing "less elegant" either. This story is about Harry figuring something out, and changing the world in the process.

Quoting George Lucas, who was quoting Leia, "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes."

Chapter One: Dementors

Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. . .

* Han, Leia and Chewbacca stood off a short way from the revelers. They stayed close to each other, not talking; periodically glancing at the path that led into the village. Half waiting, half trying not to wait; unable to do anything else.

Until, at last, their patience was rewarded: Luke and Lando, exhausted but happy, stumbled down the path, out of the darkness, into the light. The friends rushed to greet them. They all embraced, cheered, jumped about, fell over, and finally just huddled, still wordless, content with the comfort of each other's touch.

In a while, the two droids sidled over as well, to stand beside their dearest comrades. The fuzzy Ewoks continued in wild jubilation, far into the night, while this small company of gallant adventurers watched from the sidelines.

For an evanescent moment, looking into the bonfire, Luke thought he saw faces dancing—Yoda, Ben; was it his father? He drew away from his companions, to try to see what the faces were saying; they were ephemeral, and spoke only to the shadows of the flames, and then disappeared altogether.

It gave Luke a momentary sadness, but then Leia took his hand and drew him back close to her and to the others, back into their circle of warmth, and camaraderie; and love.

The Empire was dead.

Long live the Alliance.*

Harry put the book on his bedside table, his mind buzzing with possibilities. Could it really be that simple?

It was titled The Star Wars Trilogy, A Special Tenth-Anniversary Omnibus Edition. Hermione had given it to him as they were getting off the Hogwarts Express, and on the surface, it wasn't one that the Dursleys would normally object to. It was fictional, but it was science fiction, and they let Dudley mess around with that all the time. She'd told him that they were novelizations of the Star Wars movies. She'd said, "I think you might like this story, Harry. It's about a different kind of Dark Lord being defeated. We could all use such hope right now."

The thing was, the Jedi seemed to be some kind of space wizards at first glance, though upon reading the whole thing through, he knew they were closer to warrior monks, like some oriental sects such as the Shaolin were. Idly, Harry wondered if George Lucas was a squib.

The stories were fictional, but what if he could make them reality in some way? Voldemort was back. What if the next time they met, he wasn't just a boy? What if he were a Jedi, or as near as he could come on this planet, anyway?

He sighed. The trick would be in how to make it happen. He needed more information.

Harry took a bus the next morning to the local library, and he spent the entire day there. He ransacked the fiction section for anything and everything they had on Star Wars, which wasn't a lot. Then he went for other sections, taking out books on physical fitness, martial arts, sword fighting, strategy, tactics and meditation. Surrey Public Library had plenty of variety, and he found everything he was looking for.

He studied the basics of meditation first, learning what he would need to do to be successful at it, and the basics of physical fitness training. The park had a running track around the edge of it that was half a mile in circumference. He started running that track every morning, adding two laps every week. When he got up to four miles, he started adding sword training, using a cut-off Muggle broomstick. He went slowly the first week, just learning the kata in the book. Then once he had that memorized, he started blending everything together. He meditated while he ran. He meditated while he did the sword katas. He meditated at rest while he cooled down. And finally, one night while he was simply meditating on his own thoughts he found what he had been looking for.

He turned his mind inward, toward the center of his body, and there he found his magic. He dared not pull from it, knowing that his house was being monitored by the Ministry. He knew they were refusing to believe that Voldemort had returned, and because of that they would be eager to discredit him. Instead he touched the magic to get a feel for it, sunk his mind into it so that he would be able to access it on a more instinctive level.

It was like swimming in light, but once immersed, he realized that it was a reservoir fed by a mighty river, and that river flowed all around him. There were eddies and currents, places that were deep and slow, and places that were like rapids. This was the magic around him, and it reminded him strongly of the Star Wars books descriptions of the Force. He could feel how it flowed around things; houses, animals, people. He could sense the magical cores of everyone near him; the three small ones inside the house and the two large ones outside it. One felt dingy, like an old sock, but the other felt vibrant and full of sparks. The dingy one was male, and the sparkly one was female. Harry knew that these two were watching the house for Professor Dumbledore.

Ron and Hermione's letters were irritatingly vague, but he knew that they were up to something. He smiled. He knew that if it hadn't been for his reading about strategy and tactics their silence on matters of substance would have irked him, but now he understood a little more about keeping information close. It wouldn't do for the wrong people to get hold of that information, and it wasn't unheard of for owls to be intercepted. After all, Dobby had done in the summer before his second year at Hogwarts. The lack of information was disturbing to him, but he knew that he'd be able to find out once he was no longer in the Dursleys' house.

They had sent him birthday gifts and cards, and he took comfort in those tokens from his friends. No doubt, his decision to follow a different path than that of the rest of the wizarding world was changing him, and for the better. He knew that without the gift of Hermione's book he'd have let Cedric's death and the not knowing get to him. He supposed that all of this mixed with his natural teenaged hormones would have made him a right git, but with the help of his new meditation techniques and the Jedi Code he now strove to live by, he had been able to come to terms with what had happened to Cedric. He knew better than to think he was now a Jedi. He wasn't even a learner. But he didn't need to be yet, not to handle his own personal demons.

The morning of August the second, he continued his normal routine, but when he got to the point of restful meditation, he was interrupted by Dudley and his friends. It was already dark out, so Harry was thankful to them for waking him, but there was something in the air tonight, something that was disturbing the magic around him. He wasn't sure what was going on, but the fact that something was happening was unmistakable, and it had distracted him.

Dudley was still quite overweight, but he'd been cornered by a boxing coach with a good eye at his school, Smeltings, and now there was also quite a bit of muscle under the fat. Harry thought it was good for him, but Dudley was also a bully, and not just to Harry. He'd been using his boxing prowess against defenseless children, and if it weren't for the fact that Harry had much bigger problems, he'd start taking the other boy down a few pegs, get him to realize that what he was doing was wrong. His parents would certainly never teach it to him.

Dudley's friends made their farewells at the gate to the park, and seeing Harry sitting there, he came in, planning to taunt him. He rose in a single fluid motion to stand from his meditation position on the ground. "Good evening, cousin. Heading home?" he asked pleasantly.

"Like you care. Big man with his magic stick."

Harry ignored the comment about his wand. Of course, he had it on him, because he'd be a fool to go anywhere without it. But he had no intention of acknowledging the dig. Instead, he redirected. "I suppose you and your friends had some fun today? Beating up another ten-year-old? I heard about Mark Evans."

"So? He cheeked me!"

"And that gives you the right to hurt him?" He shook his head, allowing his face to show disappointment. "Dudley, do you like Star Wars?"

"What, the films? I didn't think you'd ever seen 'em."

"I haven't, but I ran across the books they'd made from them. I thought they were pretty good stuff. Did you like them?"

Nonplused at the change of subject, and Harry being so polite to him, Dudley said, "Yeah, so?"

"Who's your favorite character?"

"Han Solo!"

Harry grinned. "Yeah, he's pretty great! I like Obi-wan, myself, but Han does have a great little ship, doesn't he? And he has a great best mate! Chewbacca's awesome!"

"Yeah, he's great! Huh. I didn't think you liked normal stuff."

"Well I haven't had much chance to look at normal stuff. So tell me; why do you think Han didn't beat up on Luke? I mean he's bigger, and Chewie was there to back him up. So why didn't he?"

"Luke didn't have anything he wanted."

"Okay. D'you think he would have done if Luke did have something like that? Like the money to get him out from under Jabba's contract?" Solo Harry could work with. If it had been Vader or Anakin, Harry knew this wouldn't have worked.

"Nah. Ben did have, and he just promised to take them where they wanted to go."

"Right, he might be a scoundrel, but he's just a businessman, really. So, if you like Han so much, why don't you act like him?"

Dudley stopped in his tracks, staring at Harry like he had two heads. "Me? Be like Han Solo?" Something sparked in Dudley's mind at that. Harry felt it, like a deep longing, and he realized he was still noticing those kinds of things, like how people felt. Huh. Magic and the force were certainly showing a lot more similarities than he had expected.

He pressed on with Dudley, though. "Sure! Why not? He's got a great ride, a great mate, and he gets the girl!"

"How does that work, though? How do I suddenly start acting like Han Solo? Without getting in debt to a butt-ugly gangster?"

"Well, one, he's fit, so the girl will like him in the first place. Two, he's got a friend who's very loyal and will stick by him through thick and thin, but who isn't afraid to tell him when he's wrong or being an ass. Three, he's good at cards. He won the Falcon from Lando in a game of sabaac. He's not a goody-two-shoes, but he's not a bully, either. And he's good at fixing things. The Falcon's always in need of repairs, and it takes both him and Chewie to keep her running. And finally, you've got to have a great ride, but that can wait until you're older. As for Jabba, don't do business with that sort in the first place and you won't have to worry about it."

Dudley really wasn't as stupid as he looked, but he was conflicted. "I've got Piers, ain't I? And beating people up has always got me what I wanted before. If people are afraid of me, they'll do what I want."

Harry nodded. Time for the main point. "Yes, they will do, Dudley. But do you know who it is that feels just that way in Star Wars?"

Curious, and not realizing that there was anyone like him in what was really one of his favorite movie series, he said, "Who?"

"Emperor Palpatine. Oh, he was a genius at making people afraid! He knew that he couldn't make people too afraid of him personally, or eventually they'd fight back. So he made them afraid of other people, and then came in and rescued them, so when he asked, they gave him lots of power. Then, after he'd been given the power, he made them afraid of him so they wouldn't try to take it back."

Dudley was shocked, but he could see what Harry was saying. He wasn't wrong about the Emperor in Star Wars. "But Dad says—"

"I know, Dudley. He's encouraged you to be a bully all your life, and he was probably a bully in school, too. But he's wrong, and I think you can be better than him."

Suddenly Harry felt something else impinging on his senses, and he reached out to see what it was. It was dark, and cold, and very, very hungry. Dementors! Here!? No time to wonder why or how they'd come here. He needed to get himself and Dudley out of harm's way.

"Dudley, I know magic scares you, but right now there's something even scarier coming our way. You feel how it's starting to get really cold?"

"Yeah?"

"There are a couple of dementors in the area. I don't know why; they're certainly not allowed. You won't be able to see them because you don't have magic, but they'll still affect you, and if they corner you, they'll suck out your soul. If I do have to do magic, I swear to you I will only do it to protect us, all right. Even then our best bet is to run, understand?"

And then they were there! Harry shouted, "Run!"

For the first time in his life, Dudley showed some sense, and ran when Harry told him to, as fast as he could with the extra weight he carried. But running was not something he was used to doing, and before they got to the end of Magnolia Crescent, he was wheezing. Harry was, of course, quite capable of running far faster and further than his cousin, but he wasn't about to leave the boy to the dementors.

Suddenly the idea he'd been working on came to his mind. He hadn't tested it out, but now was the perfect time. He focused on his magic the same way he had done earlier to look at the world around him, but this time he pulled the broomstick he'd been using as a practice sword and focused his magic through it instead of pulling his wand. He then said the first thing that came to his mind, and it was a spell he had never cast before, but he trusted in the magic to tell him what was needed. The false memory of his parents, given to him by the Mirror of Erised, fueled the spell. "GLADIUS PATRONUM!"

And then there was a lightsaber in his hand! The broomstick was lit with magical light, and because of everything that was going through his head, he knew that the light would act as its mythical namesake. It was not green or blue, however, but the pure white of the Patronus.

He couldn't afford to be shocked by this development, instead turning at bay and slicing through the dementor that was closest to them. It screamed horribly as the blade passed through its midsection. The other dementor went straight for Dudley, and Harry focused the magic into his other hand and sent a wave of moving air to blow the demon off course. Harry turned his attention back to the first dementor, but quickly realized his blow had been fatal, and ran to catch back up to Dudley.

Then he saw Mrs. Figg running toward them. Disaster! The dementor was now far closer to her than it was to the boys. Harry ran as fast as he could and pushed her to the ground just as it would have reached her. It passed over their heads, and then Harry scrambled back to his feet. Then the demon screeched and turned back to try again, but this time Harry was ready for it, and as it swooped in he stepped to the side and took its head off.

"Mrs. Figg, are you all right?"

"I-I'm fine young man. What about your cousin?"

They both went to where Dudley had stopped. He was gasping for air from the running. "Dudley? How do you feel?"

"Like I'm gonna throw up. I need to get into shape. It's so cold, though! What the hell were those things?"

"Dementors. They're a kind of demon. We'll get you some chocolate when we get back to the house. You'll be right as rain." He turned to Mrs. Figg. This could be a problem. "Ah, Mrs. Figg?"

But she seemed to know what his worry was. "Don't worry about me, Harry. I'm a squib. Now, don't put that away," she said as Harry started to do exactly that and deactivate his saber. "There might be more of them out there. Oh, I am going to kill Mundungus Fletcher! He left! Left to see someone about a batch of cauldrons that fell off the back of a broom! I told him I'd flay him alive if he went, and now look. Dementors! It's just lucky I put Mr. Tibbles on the case! But we haven't got time to stand around! Hurry! We've got to get you back! Oh, the trouble this is going to cause! I will kill him!"

"All right, I'm going to put this away because it's too dangerous to have it out, but I'll get out my wand. You all right to move again, Dudd?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Let's go."

As they went, Harry got what information he could out of his old minder. "This Fletcher bloke has been following me? I thought I caught wind of one or two folk watching me from time to time."

"Of course. You don't think Dumbledore would leave you unguarded on purpose, do you? Now keep your wand out. Don't mind the Statute of Secrecy now, there's going to be hell to pay anyway, we might as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg. Talk about the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. This is exactly what Dumbledore was afraid of—what's that at the end of the street? Oh, it's just Mr. Prentice. Don't put your wand away, boy. Don't I keep telling you I'm no use?"

"I didn't use my wand to begin with. Do you think they'll still pick it up at the Ministry?" Harry didn't bother asking why he would be in trouble for defending himself and Dudley. He'd taken a subscription to the Daily Prophet and he knew they were running a smear campaign against him.

"I don't know. I know they have ways of detecting underage magic, but I don't know about wandless—MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!"

There was a loud crack and a strong smell of mingled drink and stale tobacco filled the air as a squat, unshaven man in a tattered overcoat materialized right in front of them. He had short, bandy legs, straggly ginger hair, and bloodshot, baggy eyes that gave him the doleful look of a basset hound. He was also clutching a silvery bundle that Harry recognized at once as an Invisibility Cloak.

"'S' up, Figgy? What 'appened to staying undercover?"

"I'll give you undercover! Dementors, you useless, skiving sneakthief!"

"Dementors?" he repeated, horrified. "Dementors, here?"

"Yes, here, you worthless pile of bat droppings, here! Dementors attacking the boy on your watch! And you off buying stolen cauldrons! Didn't I tell you not to go? Didn't I?"

"I—well, I—i-it was a very good business opportunity, see—"

Then she started whacking him about the head with her handbag, which was full of tins of cat food and berating him even further.

Eventually the no-account popped off to tell Dumbledore what had happened, and they went onward to the house, Harry trying hard not to laugh at the man's expression.

"I hope Dumbledore murders him! I'll take you to the door, just in case there are any more of them around." He didn't mention that he could sense the beasts and would know if there were more of them. She was upset enough as it was. "Oh, my word, what a catastrophe—and you had to fight them off yourself—and Dumbledore said we were to keep you from doing magic at all costs. All right, here we are. Get inside and stay there. I expect someone will be in touch with you soon enough."

With that she was off toward home. The boys went in as quickly as they could.

Aunt Petunia was waiting for Dudley and went berserk upon seeing his condition. "We were attacked, Mum! Harry got rid of 'em, though. We're okay."

Harry begged to differ, much as he was happy his cousin didn't blame him for all of this. "Not yet you're not. Go sit on the couch. You need to rehydrate—you're not used to running at all, let alone for your life. And we both of us need at least a half a bar of chocolate. That's first aid for a dementor's effect."

Realizing by the fact that Dudley was listening to Harry and giving him credit that this was serious, Petunia went to the kitchen and drew a glass of water from the tap for each boy and a chocolate bar from Dudley's supposedly hidden secret stash. "I guess I'm glad I stashed some candy, but after this mess I am getting fit. I don't want to get caught like that again."

"That's a great idea, Dudd. I've got some great books that can help you with that. They're what I've been training from. You won't need to go as far as I have, but you can do anything you want."

Petunia screeched, "You're not giving my son magic books!"

"Oh, no!" Harry rushed to reassure her. "They're exercise books I borrowed from the library. They're actually due back in a couple of days, but you could recheck them."

"Oh."

"Mum? Please, Harry was great tonight. I couldn't even see them until he killed them! Mrs. Figg walked us back, and she was shouting about this Fletcher that was supposed to be guarding Harry against something like this and he skived off! I thought she was going to take his head off with that bag of hers."

Harry grinned at his cousin. "She might have done if she didn't need him to get to Professor Dumbledore. All right. I may or may not be getting a bunch of owl post in a few minutes. Almost certainly one, quite possibly a few. I know you don't like them, Aunt Petunia, but I can't stop them."

And the owls came, one from Arthur Weasley telling him not to leave the house and not to use any more magic, and one from Sirius that let him know nothing had been noted at the Ministry so he should be fine. Harry breathed a sigh of relief then. It meant he would not end up in official trouble for this. It also might mean he could leave here for the Burrow. But he wanted to make certain Dudley was okay first. He didn't know if there might be a worse reaction since the other boy was a Muggle. "I want someone to come and check you over, Dudley, just to make sure you're okay." He looked at Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. "It'll have to be a witch or wizard, you understand?"

Vernon looked ready to deny him anything, but Petunia put a hand on his arm. She looked at her husband with pleading eyes, and he hung his head a little and nodded. She turned to Harry. "I know we haven't ever really got on, but thank you for helping Dudley, Po—Harry."

He just nodded, not rubbing it in. "Hedwig's out hunting right now, but I'll send her with a note as soon as she gets back in." He turned to go upstairs to his room. He needed to meditate on all of this.

"Harry?"

"Yeah, Dudd?"

"Thanks again."

He gave him a smile. "Any time."

Petunia stared at her son. "Duddikins, what happened between you two tonight? I mean, you're being nice to each other?"

"Harry showed me something tonight, about how I was treating people, and he did it in a real cool way. He's been reading Star Wars, and when I said I liked Han Solo, he showed me I was acting more like the Emperor." He looked at his parents with the same expression he used to get stuff out of them. "I don't wanna be the Emperor! I mean, I don't wanna be a bully no more. I wanna be a good guy so I can be cool like Han Solo!"

Harry grinned from the top of the stairs where he'd stopped to listen. Dudley would be all right, as far as growing up was concerned. Now he wanted to make sure he'd have that chance. He went on into his room. He kept it neat, though not obsessively so, and he had his desk set up with parchment and quill. He wrote a quick note to Arthur requesting someone stop by and check on Dudley's health. Then he sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, crossing his legs for comfort, and took several deep breaths before slipping into a meditative state.

He didn't dare to do magic in the house, or attempt another wandless spell like the lightsaber-like enchantment he'd done earlier that night. He remembered that the Ministry had picked up Dobby's shenanigans back in the summer before second year, and he hadn't even been the one to do them. He sometimes thought it might have been because Dobby wanted him to get in trouble and not be able to go back to Hogwarts, but he wasn't willing to take that chance right now. But he did contact his magic, just as a Jedi would contact the force, and let it tell him what was going on around him.

He knew it when someone arrived to check on Dudley, and he went down to meet them. He was happily surprised to see Remus Lupin standing in the sitting room running a basic diagnostic charm over his cousin. When it was finished, Remus said, "Well it looks like things are all right. Still, Harry was right to owl us. He had you eat some chocolate?" At Dudley's nod, he said, "Good. Merlin knows that boy's had to deal with dementors enough in his life to know how to handle it, but he still played it on the safe side."

"I wasn't sure if there'd be a difference since he's not magical." Remus turned toward his voice, and he smiled. "Hello, Professor."

Remus grinned at him. "Good to see you're all right, Harry."

"Yeah, and no thanks to that Fletcher bloke. All though, Mrs. Figg handled his punishment quite nicely, I'd still prefer it if he wasn't one of my minders ever again."

"Minders?" asked Aunt Petunia.

Remus sighed a bit. "How much has Harry told you about what's going on in the wizarding world?"

She looked at Vernon, who was huffing a little, but significantly less than he might with an adult wizard in the room. After all, Remus had only checked Dudley for damage, not anything else. She said, "He hasn't, at our request. We've never wanted to know."

He nodded. "All right. This is very important and you need to know for your own safety. The dark wizard who killed your sister and her husband has been returned to life through a dark ritual. He would very much like to see Harry dead, and he would think killing you and your family would not only hurt Harry, but be amusing at the same time. This man—no, he's not a man anymore, not with all he's done to himself to survive death. This creature is purely evil, and unfortunately he has many followers.

"The organization of which I am a part has set minders on this house to invisibly guard it, over and beyond the protections you have by your shared blood with Harry, which powers the wards on the house. What happened tonight, other than the dementors, was that the person who was supposed to be minding the house decided he had somewhere better to be instead of what he should have been doing. He will not be given the opportunity again, so you don't have to worry about him."

Dudley said, "Mrs. Figg said he went to see someone about a bunch of stolen cauldrons, and when he came back, he said it was a business opportunity. Don't know if he told you that or not."

Harry grinned. Dudley was living up to his own stated goals in life already and it hadn't even been a day! "Yeah, and then she wacked him over and over with her handbag. I think it was full of cat food tins."

Remus chuckled. "Right. Now, the Ministry does not seem to have detected your use of magic tonight, Harry, and we're not sure why. Not that we aren't grateful for that. We were almost sure that the Minister was going to try and do something to get you expelled, though this would have been more than a little extreme than I thought him capable of. But that aside, how did you deal with the dementors?"

Harry sighed. "I killed them."

Remus blinked. "H-how?"

"I think I've figured out how to do wandless magic. I've been doing a lot of training this summer, physical and mental training. I got some books from the local library on how to proceed, and, well, I was inspired by a series of stories called Star Wars. They're science fiction, but they have a group of warrior monks called Jedi who use swords made of very strong light called plasma. I've been practicing sword-work with a non-magical broomstick. And when they came tonight, I was still in that mindset, in contact with my magic without actively using it, just letting it flow through me. I was guided by the magic."

"You said gladius patronum, Harry," said Dudley.

"Right. I had my wooden sword out, and suddenly it was as if it were a lightsaber, but it was made of the same stuff as a Patronus, like a full Patronus got transfigured into a sword. And it acted just as a lightsaber should, sliced right through them. Dudd could see them after I'd killed them, but not before."

Remus just blinked. "Gladius? That would be from the Latin guardio, which means sword. That—That's truly amazing, Harry! I've never heard of that before. And your magic guided you into that spell? You didn't see it in a book somewhere?"

Instead of answering directly, Harry asked Dudley, "Do you have any of the Star Wars movies on a disk or a tape where we can show him kind of what I'm talking about?"

"Yeah!" Dudley jumped up and went to the video cabinet, pulling out the DVD of Episode VI, Return of the Jedi and putting it into the player. With expert fingers on the remote, the large boy flipped through the menu to the battle between Luke and Vader.

They watched just a little of it, just to give Remus an idea of what was going through Harry's head. He was astonished, to say the least. "So basically, your magic led you to what your mind was trying to achieve."

Harry nodded. "It still worked like a Patronus in that I had to bring a happy memory to mind. And after I released the magic, I noticed something." He took out the broomstick from its makeshift scabbard on his back. He'd wrapped duct tape around one end to serve as a grip and keep himself from accidentally flinging it across the park. But now, burned into the wood of the blade by the magic was an image of a stag at bay, just below the grip. "So I really just have one question, Professor. Would the Ministry pick it up if I did wandless magic in the house? I already know they won't pick up my focusing on my magic, but I haven't used it in the house just in case."

A slow smile came to the werewolf's face, one that left no doubt that he had once been numbered among those who were called the Marauders of Hogwarts. "No, Harry, they don't. Wandless magic is not taught below NEWT level, and a student is then a legal adult, so the Wizengamot never regulated it."

Harry returned the smile, but it was gentler, then turned to Vernon and Petunia. "I want to give you both a promise, and I'll make it a wizard's oath. On my magic, I swear not to perform magical spells in this house or on its grounds, except in the case of defending either myself or another from harm, until the stroke of midnight, 31 July, 1997. So mote it be." A light flashed from the palm of Harry's hand, signifying the oath. "This means that if I ever break my promise, my magic will break, and I'll become a Squib, unable to use it. But it's worded so that I can protect you and myself if we're ever attacked in the house without that happening, and now I know that if I don't use my wand, the Ministry will never know what happened. Since they don't like me right now, that's a tactical advantage."

Remus was beaming at this point. "I'm very proud of you, Harry."

"And what, pray tell, did all of that mean?" asked Vernon.

Remus answered, "It means that before he swore that oath, he could have cursed any of you since he had figured out how to do magic without his wand, but he has chosen not to. He has chosen to take the moral high road, despite your previous treatment of him, which I know has not been kind."

Harry said quietly, "I have no desire for you to fear me."

Petunia looked at her nephew with new eyes. "I think we need to talk, Harry. All of us, as a family."

"Family?" Vernon blurted. "But he's—"

"Vernon, I love you, but please don't finish that sentence."

Remus stood and went to Harry. "I'd best be getting back. I'll be with the group who come to get you, probably in three or four days. I'm glad you're all right, Harry."

"'S good to see you, Professor."

"I'm not your Professor any more, Harry. You can call me Remus."

"Whatever you say, Professor," said Harry with a grin.

Remus chuckled. "Imp."

Then he left by the front door, the sound of it closing followed by a loud pop, the sound of Remus Disapparating. Harry sat down on one of the chairs, and for a moment, they all just stared at one another. Then Harry said, "So what can I tell you?"

*excerpt from Return of the Jedi, by James Khan, Del Rey, 1983. No copyright infringement intended.

Author's Note: Much of this chapter is directly quoted from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J. K. Rowling, Scholastic, 2003. No copyright infringement intended.

As with all of my stories, if you are reading this, then it is a complete story, and it will update once per week until the posting has been completed. Review to feed the beast!

Note: Yes, a lot of this comes directly from the book, but it will quickly diverge thanks to Harry's different attitude and new ability. There will also be no hearing, for the obvious reason that the Ministry doesn't have a clue that Harry's done anything. :D

EDIT: All right, all instances of "Guardius" have been changed to Gladius. My only Latin comes from online translators, so I bow to you lot's greater expertise.