Lost and Longing.

Ahsoka turned to Aayla to apologize, but before she could say anything, Harry's shouted voice emerged from the door he had just stepped through. "Merlin blast it!"

Ahsoka rushed in right after Harry, only to be stopped almost immediately. The utter disbelief at the sight before her made her forget almost all other thoughts and rooted her to the spot, although she was shoved forward slightly when Master Secura followed quickly on her heels and stumbled into her.. Both of them could do little more than gasp in shock as they looked around at the unnatural chaos before them.

The hangar resembled a house of horrors. There were bodies all over the docking bay. Some laying over packing crates or behind pillars. Some slumped against the wall, and there was a chest high pile of bodies stacked up on the ground. The bodies encompassed species of all sorts, human, trandoshan, gamorrean, duros, aquilish, twi'lek, sullustan and rodian were just the ones Ahsoka was able to identify.

All of the bodies were completely naked.

Ahsoka and Aayla could only stare in a dumbfounded manner as they looked around and tried to come to grips with what their eyes were telling them.

Harry had his head bowed. His eyes were closed while he rubbed his forehead slowly, all while he slowly counted down from fifty...

"DOOOBBBBY!" Harry finally cried out, the exasperation in his voice easy to hear.

There was a hesitation and then a small snap. Out of nowhere, a small being appeared with pointed ears and dressed in overalls. He was wearing three different types of goggles on his head and holding a hydro-spanner. His sudden appearance caused both Ahsoka and Aayla to jerk in surprise, though Aayla's reaction was far worse, as she had yet to experience someone popping in nearby via teleportation.

"Yes, Master Harry Potter, sir!" the house elf asked as he practically bounced, looking far too chipper for any being.

Harry groaned again, hearing the being call him Master. "Dobby, what happened to just calling me Harry?"

"Miss Soaky gets to call Harry Potter Master, then Dobby can start calling him Master again. Master Harry Potter says that Dobby shouldn't be the only one to call him that. But now Dobby isn't, so Dobby can say Master again!" The little house elf rambled brightly, while indicating Ahsoka with he hydrospanner he carried.

Harry shoot Ahsoka a glare that promised retribution in the future before he closed his eyes and once more counted to fifty in his head before he began to speak very slowly, with a forced calm that kept his voice level. "Dobby. I give you very few rules. What was the first rule I told you about nudity?"

"Dobby is never to undress Master Harry Potter for him while he is sleeping." Dobby dutifully replied, looking even more proud of himself for reciting it.

Harry sighed, and visibly twitched as he did so. That had happened only once. It had creeped him the hell out. He had been very blunt in laying down the law the next day with the House Elf so that there was never a repetition of it.

Aayla was just watching the nearly surreal interaction, surrounded by naked bodies. She had no frame of reference for how to act in a situation like this, and had no idea where to mentally start cataloging what was wrong with the sights before her.

Ahsoka wasn't much better, as she certainly wasn't prepared for the naked bodies, but she was able to focus a bit more as she finally saw the elusive Dobby for the first time since she boarded the Gryffindor, despite multiple attempts at tracking the tiny creature.

"Okay, yes, Dobby. That was the first rule. What was the second most important rule that concerns naked people?" Harry asked in that same forced calm voice.

Dobby frowned. "That Dobby was not to strip people down for punishment."

Harry nodded and then gestured to the pile of bodies with a violent wave of his hand as the forced composure in his voice almost broke, "Care to explain these?"

Dobby only looked a little bit abashed, "Great Master Harry Potter say if people damaged Master or Master's things, only the rule about staying safe remained in effect."

Harry looked up at the ship with a raised eyebrow. "It looks pristine to me. The Corinthian paint job doesn't even look damaged."

After a few moments of examination, Harry mentally corrected himself. Unbreakable charms might have had something to do with the lack of visible damage. He continued to survey the ship with a practiced eye. Still, Dobby was rarely wrong about anything to do with the ship. Harry, despite himself, was actually a bit surprised. Despite all the years he was with Dobby, occasionally something 'new' revealed itself, which was an ever-present reminder to the wizard that he didn't know everything in the universe. Despite voicing his doubts, he trusted Dobby implicitly, which meant if Dobby said there was something wrong, then there was something wrong.

Ultimately, Harry chalked it up to being yet another quirk of the House Elf's makeup, and that his friend's awareness of the ship was very much like his awareness of the status of any of Harry's homes. They seemed to know what was wrong and where things needed to be fixed, or things that might be about to go wrong. It made Dobby an amazingly effective mechanic. "What did they damage, Dobby?" eventually asked in a pained voice.

he

Dobby pointed at a pile of armor, weapons, clothes and other pieces of equipment. "Dobby left bad men alone at first. Bad men couldn't get in ship. Then bad men's attach something to hull. Dobby hears big boom and flash and strange blue lights all over ship.. Blue light did something to ship's computer. Metal Minnie say that ship's computer no longer working."

Harry blinked in surprise as he almost instantaneously translated what Dobby was saying and then scowled. He hadn't seen a device do that before, at least not one used by a group of mercs attempting to board a ship, though he had some ideas of what it might be from rumors he had heard of the more advanced weaponry being used in the current war.

"Can you fix it?" he asked.

Dobby's ears drooped and he shook his head, while tugging on his ears. "Is not broken broken, it just will not turn on."

"That's your mechanic?" Ahsoka asked in disbelief, finally managing to find her voice. Distantly she wondered if it had truly been only a few minutes ago that she thought she was used to Harry's quirks enough not to be surprised much anymore.

Dobby looked past Harry at Ahsoka and thrust his chest out proudly "Dobby is good mechanic! Dobby heard Miss Soaky say she could help fix things on ship, but Dobby is the best mechanic for Great Master Harry Potter!" The last part was said with an almost defensively shout as his features fixed in a scowl. Ahsoka though, didn't even pay attention to the green being questioning her skills with starships. She had firmly latched on to the nickname that the being had apparently created for her.

"Miss Soaky?" she parroted, this time looking to Harry for an explanation, only now he seemed a trifle amused.

Harry smirked a little bit. "Dobby chooses his own names. Trust me … it could be a lot worse."

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