Lost and Longing.

Harry sighed disappointedly, "Probably because my blood is... unique," he chose carefully after he considered and discarded several synonyms.

At Shaak Ti's inquiring and curious gaze, Harry grimaced and gestured at the medical device, "Can that scan for other stuff?"

"It's a fairly standard medical diagnostic tool." Shaak Ti replied, her head tilting ever so slightly to the side in wordless inquiry. "Can it do a scan for exotic substances that aren't blood?" Harry asked mildly. "Say… a test for poison, just to pick one."

"It is a medical scanner... It can do a scan for toxins and pathogens…" Shaak Ti trailed off as her fingers moved across the screen of the medical scanner quickly. "By the Force… that can't be right…"

"What is it?" Aayla asked looking over Shaak Ti's shoulder, trying to see what had shaken her friend's composure.

Harry rolled his eyes slightly and looked resigned to the looks of confusion now directed at him from Aayla.

Shaak Ti's fingers had long since stopped moving over the device as she looked up at Harry, glancing repeatedly between Harry and the readout. Her voice was level as she spoke, but still managed to betray more than a little surprise, "According to this you should be dead… very dead."

"Lady, if I had a galleon for every time I heard that…" Harry shook his head ruefully, well aware that the women had no idea what a galleon was.

"What is it?" Ahsoka demanded, for the first time speaking directly to Shaak Ti.

"While it cannot seem to get a reading on midi-chlorians, it is registering the toxicity levels in his blood sample as literally off the charts. The scanner is saying there are dozens of different identified toxins present, maybe more … . and even more unidentified substances." Shaak Ti replied, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. "As in the toxins in that small blood sample alone could kill… I don't know... thousands."

Aayla and Ahsoka's expressions were more of surprise than of suspicion.

"I've been bitten by some pretty nasty magical things in the past," Harry frowned, "Nor does it take into account the amount of times there were attempts to poison me."

"Bitten by magical things?" Shaak Ti asked dryly.

"Attempts to poison you?" Aayla said at nearly the same moment in surprise. "Yeah, I had to fight magical creatures on more than one occasion and got myself bit, or breathed on, or sprayed, or stung, or slobbered on." Harry shrugged, "I nabbed my first at age 12, a ruddy great snake, with pretty much sheer blind luck and then it happened with some regularity after that."

"Snakes are regularly venomous." Shaak Ti observed. "Many exist on this world in fact."

Harry rolled his eyes and a trace of scorn entered his voice, "Yes, thank you for that tutorial on snakes. Tell me, how many species of those snakes have the ability to petrify or kill by sight alone?"

"Well, several of them hunt prey that will freeze, usually because their prey believes an attempt to remain still will mean that a predator will not see them." Shaak Ti replied.

"No, I mean petrify in the literal sense, as in turning someone to stone." Harry replied dryly.

"None… that I'm aware of. That is the sort of things you hear in myths and legends," Shaak Ti replied. "I am aware of no verified animal of that nature."

"Lack of proof is not proof of lack," Harry retorted dryly. "I killed one, and it was about 60 meters or so long."

"That… that.. would make it an incredibly powerful apex predator and possibly one of the most dangerous animals in the galaxy," Shaak Ti breathed out. "Wasn't even the most dangerous animal that I faced. Don't get me started on clutch protecting dragons or nundus," Harry grumbled as he shook his head in disgust.

Shaak Ti looked flummoxed and glanced to Aayla and Ahsoka for assistance, Aayla spoke up almost immediately, "What about the attempts at poisoning you mentioned?"

"Kreacher was a bad house elf," Dobby stated as he popped into existence with his arms folded and a scowl on his face. The action causing Shaak Ti to jerk in surprise once more but the other two seemed to be used to it by this point.

Harry blinked and then a look of realization crossed his face. He actually chuckled. "Dobby, I really meant genuine attempts on my life… I'd actually forgotten all about that."

"There was another house elf that served one of the families from which I inherited head of house." Harry started to explain, seeing the looks on the faces of the others and figuring he might as well answer their inevitable questions. "He apparently had a bit of a contest with one of his former Masters, in which he would randomly attempt to poison the Head of House, while they would have to realize their food was poisoned before eating or ingest a bezoar to counteract the effects of the poison."

"The Head of House before me apparently ordered the house elf not to do it to him after the first time he tried." Harry shook his head wryly. "Kreacher took those orders literally and stopped doing it to him, but then restarted when I inherited." "Bad Kreacher." Dobby reiterated and huffed with a little stomp of his foot with his chin raised imperiously.

"Truthfully he was doing it to my food for years before we realized it was happening. I didn't even notice. He was quite creative with the variety of poisons he used," Harry shrugged a bit and looked back at Shaak Ti, "I'm sure some of that gunk is still in my blood, which is probably why you can't get the other reading off me. Your little magic measurer thing probably doesn't know which one to focus on at any given time."

"I don't understand how you can still be living with blood like this." Shaak Ti confessed.

"Ah, yeah. My blood also has a remarkably powerful healing curative mixed in with it. Not sure if you can isolate that from the rest of the gunk. The tears of the phoenix, which is another magical species, initially in there to counteract the basilisk venom inside of me." Harry added, usually he wasn't so forthcoming but he was enjoying the constant looks of befuddlement.

"You mean a Corosian phoenix?" asked Aayla.

"No, though they're beautiful birds, they're not really magical. I went looking for them when I first heard of them. They're nothing like real phoenixes," Harry shook his head, and then blinked as a thought occurred to him. "Can that test the blood of anything?"

At Shaak Ti's curious nod Harry looked thoughtful for a moment. "Let's see if we can check something then."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For some other reason this novel will only be published 3 times a week.

[Advanced chapters on my ko-fi page]

https://ko-fi.com/fictiontopia