Chapter Twenty

The next day Harry and his new friends woke up, joining with Aayla and the girls outside of their room before following a small glowing robot all that hovered in the air above them. "Students, please make your way to your first class of the day. Breakfast will be served afterwards."

"That's strange," Harry said, scratching at his messy hair. "I always thought breakfast should happen first but maybe that's just me."

"You can't just wave your hands and make some food?" asked one of the younger students as they all followed the ball.

Harry shook his head. "Not without something to start with, it doesn't quite work like that. I mean I could, but you wouldn't get any of the…" he paused, looking over at Aayla. "nutritional elements, right?"

Aayla nodded indicating he had use the right words and Harry went on. "So you might think you're eating, but it wouldn't fill you up or give you any of the protein or anything else that you need for the day."

The girl looked a little grumpy at that, but nodded. "I suppose that makes sense."

"Wait…" said one of the other girls suddenly serious. "Would the food you conjure up still taste the same?"

"So long as I knew what it tasted like and could picture it yes," Harry replied with a nod.

All of the girls suddenly looked at one another at that. "And it wouldn't have any calories or anything?" one of the others, a young girl somewhere between Alecto and Aayla's age with green skin and a vague reptilian appearance asked.

"Calories?" Harry asked cocking his head to one side.

"The things that make you go fat," Aayla said with a shrug. She didn't see the point of worrying about that kind of thing, having gone hungry more than once as a slave. But she supposed other girls might.

"We are definitely going to have to talk further about that," said one of the older girls with a faint laugh. "Though I have to wonder how you do all that anyway, none of the teachers have hinted at anything like that being possible with the Force."

She said that as they were entering the room and Harry smiled suddenly widely moving towards the center of the room calling back over his shoulder, "You might be able to find out yourself soon."

The other children all looked towards what had grabbed his attention and either smiled or looked shocked, with Aayla hurrying after him, smiling widely. Lily floated at the front of the room, her legs crossed under her as she seemed to sit on that desk there, as much as was possible anyway. Arrayed all around her were small pillows, one for each student, and they quickly sat in them, facing her.

"Good morning," she said, smiling at them all. "I realize I introduced myself last night, but let me do so formally once more. My name is Lily Potter, and I will be your teacher in this class, starting today. Before anyone asks, no I am not what you call a Jedi, but I do believe I am also a Force user, as you use the term. We, that is my son and I have much to learn from the Jedi, but also much to teach you."

Turning she nodded to knight To'neen who had been seconded as her assistant, and he inputted a command into the large computer screen behind her. A few lines of Galactic standard script popped up there as she continued. "First, we will discuss meditation, what you are actually learning from it, the differences between how the Jedi do things, and how my people did things. Most of that I expect will be in the realm of visualization." she finished, enunciating the last word clearly to make certain that she said it correctly in Galactic Standard.

"From that, we will segue into the second part of the class, that of manipulation." Again she enunciated the word clearly, gesturing to her son. "You have all seen what Harry can do, and I have no doubt that a lot of you are interested in trying to see if you can learn the same thing. I doubt we'll get there today, but I think we can learn whether or not it's possible by the end of the week. If, that is, you all are motivated. Are you?"

They all cheered at that, even the older students losing some of the self-control that they had been taught at the idea of being able to do even a few of the things Harry could.

"Excellent," she said, clapping her hands, creating a sound that the students felt through the Force just as much as they heard it via their ears. Listening to a Force Ghost was like that, half in your head, half in your ears. It was very unusual, but somewhat pleasant too. The sound cut through the noise and the students subsided quickly.

"The third part of the class will be a question and answer session. However I reserve the right to not answer any questions that I deem too personal, or too advanced. If they are too advanced, I will explain why." She laughed suddenly, sending a shiver through her listeners and they all smiled at one another. "Mind you, most of the time my answers will be 'I don't know yet'. The Force, as you all call it reacts differently here than in our own world."

Alecto, who had said he was a Duros the day before raised a hand. "You said the word 'in' there Master, was that deliberate or a mistake of the language barrier?"

"We're still trying to figure that one out." Lily said with a smile. "Master Tholme has decided that he will be trying to find where our planet is from what little information Harry and I were able to tell him, but unless I'm mistaken he hasn't found anything yet."

She looked over to the wall where Master Tholme and Master Illaviel stood, and Tholme stepped forward as all eyes turned to him. "Mistress Lily and young Harry come from a world called Earth, which translates to 'dirt' in our language, or perhaps 'soil'. It is the third planet out from their yellow sun and is one of nine, with four gas giants. It does not match any solar system I have heard of, nor does it match any in the files I can access here on Explorer."

There were some startled exclamation said that, and more than one student there wondered how than they had come to be on the Ryloth then. Aayla wasn't among them, she didn't care how they had, only that they had, and that her life had most definitely become far more interesting fun and above all safe than it had been before wen Harry and Lily became a part of it.

"All right," Lily said drawing the students' attention back to her, "we will begin with meditation. Would one of you like to describe that for me for a moment? And as you answer questions, please tell me your name, so that I get to know you all."

Another student raised his hand. "Mira, master Potter. Um, we are supposed to try and clear our mind, then sort of feel out the area around us. We have to sit perfectly still, we have to remember to clear our mind, to not allow any emotions to touch us when we reach out to the Force."

"That's interesting," Lily said frowning thoughtfully. "And it's just Mrs. Potter if you're feeling formal, or mistress Lily if you're not. Does anyone else have anything to add to that?"

"We are supposed to do it at least five times a day, at least, for an hour each mistress." said another youngster, a boy who introduced himself as Soral. "It leads us to self-discipline, self-knowledge, and the Force, the three pillars of the Order."

"Three pillars, interesting," Lily said thoughtfully, looking over to Tholme again. The two of them had this talk early on in, but she realized they would have to revisit it now that her vocabulary had come up to a level where they could go into greater depth. "Well, that is not precisely how I do things, but I can see a lot of good in the Jedi way of doing things. Self-control is important." she emphasized the word, by gesturing with a finger and at To'neen's command another message appeared on the board behind her to emphasize that point.

"Self-discipline is important among my own people, but we tend to do it a little differently." Lily moved off of the desk where she had seemed to be sitting, moving into a meditation stopped sitting position in front of them. All of them who had the human body type did the same, while Wulo, the only one there with a non-humanoid body did the same with his upper body sitting on his haunches with his legs crossed underneath them.

It looked a little uncomfortable for him, and Lily spotted that immediately gesturing him to stand if he wished. He did so quickly, smiling at her. At the sight of that the ancient Bothan master had to nod in approval. The woman certainly seemed to have at least some of the skills necessary to teach.

"When my people meditate, we tend to use the art of visualization to aid mental organization more than the Jedi seem to. We call our mental discipline Occlumency, which means to occlude the mind. This allows us to organize our thoughts into a mental representation."

Behind Lily the robot took his cue and began to go through a series of pictures, with little people labeled 'thoughts' entering a giant building of some kind, then being sorted by color into several rooms. Putting that together with Master Tholme's help had taken up half the night before, but since she didn't need sleep, so that didn't matter to her.

The children laughed, looking at the picture then at Lily as she went on. "Picture a castle, a mansion, or perhaps a starship. Each starship has rooms, and those rooms will each contain certain memories. The defenses of that starship is also important, the shields and so forth that you can imagine into being."

A lot of the students now looked very interested, happy to have a chance to use their imaginations rather than simply trying to control their minds. "But you have to build the castle, or whatever your image is, from the ground up, making certain every part of it is solid before going on. This will be the toughest portion of this lesson, and I won't lie, it will probably take weeks to get even a small mental area built before you are ready to go onto the next phase.

"First, close your eyes. Then begin to imagine your body, as you are now. Imagine it walking through the halls of this spaceship perhaps, or a castle or anything else you wish to imagine, but can imagine in detail, that's important. Then begin to build that image, filling out the detail, brick by brick. When this step is done, you should be able to feel it when I or one of the Jedi masters is trying to reach out to your mind with our own powers."

As Lily had expected none of the students were able to understand everything she was trying to teach them, but they eventually made a lot of progress with meditation, which she supposed was down to their previous training. Lily didn't like the amount of emphasis the Jedi version of meditation put on reaching out to the Force rather than protecting themselves, but she couldn't doubt that the self-discipline part was already taking hold in the students. Even Harry had a lot of trouble with this aspect.

At the end of an hour Lily clapped her hands together, bringing the students all out of their meditations with a start. Harry and Aayla broke out quickly, shaking their heads and looking up at her with smiles on their faces as did the others after a few moments.

"I believe that was an excellent first period. Now, we're going to start the second round, manipulation." A few tummies began to rumble and Lily laughed as their owners looked sheepishly around at their fellows. "First food of course," she said, floating up from where she had sat, forgetting for a moment to put her legs back down from the lotus position until she was well into the air. The sight brought a round of giggles form the kids and the first class under their new teacher ended on a high note despite not having anything not show for it just yet.

After they were all fed and watered the classes resumed. Here Lily was impressed with the amount of training tools that the Jedi had available to teach students how to become used to changing the universe around them. They were all decent, some of them even fun, and she worked closely with each student in turn, getting an impression of their various abilities.

Their ability to control what back on Earth would be called 'accidental' magic was impressive, and Lily wondered idly if that was because of the mental discipline they were being taught, or because of their power levels. Wizards and witches didn't really have a set scale to measure their magical ability, but she was prepared take a punt that even the weakest Jedi would be stronger than most wizards back home.

We may be able to do things with the Force as they put it more than they can, but I think that comes down to control, belief and maybe a few other factors too mostly centered around whether or not this Unifying Force really is as all powerful as the Jedi make it out to be. Lily was slowly coming up with a few theories about that and about the difference between the galaxy they were in and Earth itself, but nothing concrete just yet.

Harry of course excelled in these classes, though he was careful not to rub it in to his fellow spaces which brought a smile to Lily's face. Then they went into the second part of the class. "Okay, that's all stuff you've done before obviously, and I think your progress is excellent, as your own teachers do."

More than one student turned to look towards the wall where Master Illaviel was along with her two helpers, and saw them nodding. At this level of training positive reinforcement was a must, to build the sense of camaraderie, fellowship and even family that was necessary to build the trust in the Order all Jedi needed.

They would learn to abstain from emotions and the importance of putting the Order over personal attachments in a few years. For some reason as Tholme thought that he looked at Lily and Harry, and got a Force premonition that once they began talking seriously about the no emotions part of that statement they would run into real problems with them.

Still, he had anticipated it, and he reiterated his previous position to himself. We must have Harry in the Order, if I have to bend the Oath until it squeals then I will do so. He was not looking forward to explaining that position to master Windu and a few of the others, but at least Grand Master Yoda would see the need. I hope.

"However, I'm betting all of you would like to know where Harry started. Harry? Was the first thing you began to do with your powers?"

Harry winced, but replied quickly. "I learned first that my force powers allowed me to heal faster than most people. I learned also that my hair stays like this," he said gesturing to the messy hair which according to Lily he got from his father. "The people I was living with at the time tried to cut it, but the next day it grew back."

More than one of the children laughed at that, and one of the others piped up. "For me, it was moving a toy. One of my parents put it up on a top shelf and I couldn't get at it, but then I could!"

"But the first thing I really controlled was making my hair longer," Harry said, closing his eyes briefly. There were gasps all around him as his hair did truly grow a little. Tholme's eyes narrowed speculatively, interest rising once again within him.

"Self-transfiguration like that is normally very difficult, but among my people there were a few who had inherited talents that let them do it easier." Lily paused there, having to explain what inheriting something meant. But the kids here were incredibly bright, so it didn't take long.

"Since you've already all proved that you are able to move things with your minds however, let us see what we can see." She began to manipulate one of the toys, concentrating hard on it, and it hovered in the air in front of her, and she let her hand fall back, hiding its trembling behind her back. Manipulating items like that was very difficult, but it was getting slightly easier to use magic to do it, which rather surprised her since she had never learned wandless magic before. Or the Force I suppose around here. Whoever came up with that name anyway? "Harry, could you change the color of this please?"

Harry shrugged and waved his hand. The ball changed color from silver to a dark orange. All the children leaned forward, as did the teachers. This was the part they were most interested in.

"This is a spell from the 'charm' school among my people." Lily went on gesturing to the ball. "Transfiguration, what Harry was doing yesterday, means to change something that already exists into something else. Charms means to affect something that exists already, to change its place in space, or to give it a new addition without changing what it is. We're not going to go into the specifics schools of disciplines here, since they are often confusing. This is simply to see if anyone else can do what we can. I fully expect you to be able to, with a bit of help in the visualization. Does everyone remember what that word means from our meditations?"

They all nodded and Lily went on. "Good, now we will practice this for half an hour, then go back to meditation, then physical exercises under master Tholme and the other teachers. I'm afraid I won't be helping you in those classes," she said, looking down at her ghostly form which got a laugh from the kids. "Then we will come back, have an hour of meditation, and try again."

As Lily had expected, none of the students got it the first time through, but she was surprised when a few of them were able to do it after meditating again the third time. None of the colors they imagined were as clear as and complete as the one Harry had managed, but Aayla had changed the silver of her ball into a light silvery pinkish color, which was rather attractive. All the girls smiled at it, but it wasn't what Aayla had been attempting.

"The key is visualization," Lily said again. "You must visualize the change completely in your mind, then reach forward with your 'Force' powers and impose that change upon the reality before you. It isn't hard once you start get the hang of it. My own people use gestures and words to help the process along."

With that Lily split the group up evenly into three portions. One portion began to concentrate on using their abilities and simply visualizing it with no aid. The second group under was taught the gestures, and the third the wording for the color change spell. Those gestures were the same someone would go through if they had a wand, and a few of the kids didn't like how ridiculous they looked, swishing and flicking their fingers like that. The others were a little hesitant about the words, since they were in a foreign language and they had a heck of a time getting their tongues around the words, but game-fully pushed on.

By the end of that the day several students had managed to get some color changing from their work. Two students under Harry's group had, one of whom was Wulo, the other Alecto. The group with the gestures had all managed small changes, but nothing major. The third group had accomplished two full changes among them, which was excellent work for a day. All of the students however save Harry were noticeably drooping, tired mentally and physically by the time they finished for the day.

As her assistant held up the two perfectly changed balls looking somewhere between interested and shocked, Lily smiled moving around the room and ruffling hair or touching heads as she went. "I want everyone to congratulate Mac and Luci. Because of them, I'm going to have my son here transfigure something called chocolate donuts for you all this evening."

"Just to make clear, when you say chocolate you really mean it right, that isn't something that is getting lost in the translation?" said one of the girls from the back, which garnered laugher from all of the children and they raced out of the room toward the cafeteria.

"We don't usually use material things like that to motivate the children, verbal praise and a new datapad is the most we do," Illaviel frowning and shaking her head at Lily. "Your motivating them using external motivation rather than internal, which will give out eventually. And worse, it teaches them to place attachment on objects."

Lily shrugged, mentally filing that bit about attachments away once again among her other issues with the Jedi training. A lot of it made sense, a lot of it pointed to why the Jedi didn't need focuses, but some of it was just odd. They live more like monks than normal people let alone wizards so are they an order of monks, or are they somehow a religion and that aspect just isn't carrying over to Harry and I in our discussions with them?

She put that thought out of her mind for now to answer the other woman's point. "When children are this young, you have to match the motivation to the level they can mentally understand. You can't just demand that they act like short adults, that's not going to happen. As more and more students start to get the idea, we'll stop having food as a motivator, learning itself will take over from that point on, but external motivators are still going to be necessary going forward."

The woman still looked dubious, at least she was if the Bothan body language was the same as humans. Lily watched as she moved around the room examining the various items the children had been using, a few of which had begun to fade back into normalcy. "Is that normal?" she asked gesturing at them.

"If you mean them changing back, not where we come from no. But I think that is down to the difference in how what you call the Force responds here in comparison to back home. We'll see if the other children can make those types of changes permanent like Harry can."

"But Harry can do that?" Tholme asked. "I only ask because of the beds he created yesterday."

"Transfigured, and yes, he can. Harry transfigured the bed he and eventually Aayla used back on Ryloth, and it was still there several weeks after he made it." Lily shrugged. "As I said, it will be interesting to see if the students can do the same thing."

The chocolate cake needless to say was a hit, and the two students who had managed it, a very young boy of around five, and another older girl of nine were the stars of the hour. Then the students returned to the classroom for the question-and-answer session. Lily sat in amongst them now, since she wanted this to be a general getting to know you question and answer session rather than directed at her or Harry alone. She made a point of trying to keep Harry's past with the Dursleys private knowing how he felt about it. But it came out nonetheless, and all the boys and girls were sympathetic, one or two of them even having had similar experiences with bullies or others of that nature.

The final session for the day was another meditation round then they retired to their rooms for the day.

"Walk with us Lily," Tholme said gesturing the ghost follow them.

"Float, you mean?" Lily replied dryly, sending a last look her son's way, to where he and Aayla were apparently regaling a few other students with their run in with the Wampa, their arms locked around one another as they walked. Aayla was quite a huggy sort of girl, which Lily felt was just what her son needed.

"That was an excellent first day," Illaviel said, her mannerism having noticeably thawed throughout the day though she was still stiff and stern to Lily's eyes. Still, Lily could liken her to Prof. McGonagall, so that was alright. So long as she kept their interactions solely from one teacher to another anyway.

"I'm still not certain about this whole reaching out to the magic, to the Force, around you thing. It was never described to me in that manner, but I can understand it. Asking the Force for aid is still strange to me, but so long as someone else can handle that aspect, we seem to be on the right track here." Lily replied, shrugging her ethereal shoulders.

"I understand among your people basic education takes seven years? Do you think it would take a full seven years to get the other students to where Harry is? Won't that be slowing him down in turn?"

"I don't know yet, we'll see. I think it will depend on whether or not Harry begins to learn how to reach out to the Force like you Jedi describe. If he can, that's a sure sign that the teachings can all crossover rather than the simple things."

"Simple things? Tholme mentioned a few force powers but he didn't go into detail outside of the transfiguration that your son has shown us already."

"That's because Harry doesn't really know many attacks spells. I've taught him a few just for self-defense and the effects of a few of them do sound like what Master Tholme has described as force powers already, but many don't. We'll see what you think about the others when we get there." Lily shrugged again.

For about two weeks the training vessel continued on its way as the students learned, both from Lily and from the other teachers. They all slowly mastered the color changing spell, and then began to move on to other charms, and the simplest Transfiguration Lily could remember, transforming a needle into a matchstick and back. They mastered the two, if slower than many of them had hoped, and doing so continued to exhaust them.

Still, it was a good sign for Tholme and the others that they could learn it at all. Tholme himself attempted a few of the simpler spells, and could not make it work at all. He simply could not visualize it enough while also reaching out with the Force to actually create the spell.

As for the children themselves, they positively loved the new classes, and Harry and Aayla fit in almost immediately. Aayla had issues with a few of the other girls, but her willingness to help them out in their classes, her lack of ego and outgoing nature soon won them over. Even the Falleen girl who had initially seen her as a rival quickly thawed towards Aayla.

Among the boys Harry and Alecto being the oldest students automatically became the leaders of the other boys, which could have gone to their heads if either of them were the type to let that happen. Alecto was a down to earth sort, serious at times, but also remarkably level-headed and hard working. He and Harry got on very well almost from the get-go, along with Wulo.

That Harry would become one of the better achievers in the classes was a given, but like Aayla he didn't have much of an ego, and always went out of his way to help the other students along rather than keep to himself. He made several friends because of this, and was frankly having the time of his life.