Harry chuckled and shrugged, "More like re-discovered really, since someone else had already done it first. And others are thought to have done it, but they didn't actually make the knowledge of their achievement public." He tilted his head to the side a little bit absently, and almost immediately and without any sort of warning, Hedwig had taken off of the chair she had made her perch, and landed on his shoulder, right by Ahsoka's head. The bird seemed to be over her anger, at least for the moment as she nuzzled the side of his head.
Harry reached up and stroked her feathers lightly. "Hedwig is how I know it works. She's the oldest owl in history as far as I know. She is the descendent of my first friend and when I went to find a way to experiment, with the stone and the Elixir of Life, she refused to let me choose anything like a lab rat. Started pecking me and refused to stop."
Hedwig let out a preck, that was either emphasis or pride but either way totally agreed with Harry's statement.
"You know it's funny," He stroked her feathers lightly as she nipped as his fingers, playfully this time. "After I moved past being upset, that it had worked, but only worked too late. I only told my two sons and my daughter what I had accomplished in the end. But none of them asked for the elixir. They were content to live out their lives with their families and friends. Though all three of them lead exceptionally long lives. My daughter lived to be 317."
"After I accomplished that I… gave serious thought to following my wives to the afterlife of my own volition," Harry shrugged a bit and offered a weak smile to the Jedi. "But it felt too much like quitting and I thought I'd be just giving up. I realized that I'd be disappointing them by simply ending it like that. It was pretty effective at staying my hand."
The hat harrumphed at that but didn't say anything in response.
Ahsoka stared up at him, she could tell despite his blasé tone that it was a sad topic for Harry, and she could also tell that he wasn't telling them everything about that particular portion of his life. But she could sense it wasn't an area that he necessarily wanted to linger on.
She wondered how low he got if he was considering attempting to kill himself. The idea that Harry would do that was so jarring to her and she found herself hugging him again, this time it was as much about giving him reassurance, as it was about her giving him reassurance. Hedwig barked at Harry and fixed him with a glare as if challenging his statement and pulling him out of his musing. The Sorting Hat chuckled softly at the owl. "That wasn't the only reason though."
Harry sighed wryly, knowing that Hedwig and the Sorting Hat were keeping him relatively honest, though he knew he could silence the thing at any time. "Okay, I also still felt responsible."
"Responsible? For what?" Aayla asked curiously, keeping in mind what Ahsoka had originally told her about treating the bird like the smartest being around.
"Well, at that point in time, I had also become the defacto Dark Lord killer on my world. A Dark Lord would start making noise and I'd have to pop in and smack them down," Harry shook his head with a sigh.
"Tonks always told me I had an overdeveloped sense-of-responsibility gland. Another literary reference," He smiled fondly in remembrance "Daphne kept telling me that I was the self-appointed cure to the magical world's continually recurring case of cranial rectum syndrome. My best friend called it a saving-people-thing. Whatever it was, for a long time, when Dark Lords popped their heads up, I was the one the magical world started looking to in order to smack them down."
That caused more raised eyebrows from the three women at the table.
"What? You think your Jedi Order has the monopoly on stupid ideologies and self destructive tendencies? Hardly," Harry sneered derisively, though it was clear that he wasn't directing it right at the Jedi.
"Pardon me?" Shaak Ti interjected, and it was clear that he had managed to offend her. Aayla's expression was more resigned, as she had heard Harry's opinions on the Order more than once.
Harry focused his attention on Shaak Ti, and pointed at her with the hand that was resting over Ahsoka's shoulder,, "You, I might pardon if you continue on the path to independent thought. But I can hardly blame you for that reaction, though you might not like why. My society was precisely the same way. Arrogant, unable to learn from its own mistakes," Harry quipped before shaking his head. "Anyway, it was practically like clockwork, every twenty or thirty years. Occasionally we'd reach forty years, but inevitably some moron would rise up, collect some followers, kill some non-magicals first, then move on to magicals, and think that he or she could then enslave the world."
"The first Dark Lord I fought wanted to take over and used the belief in blood purity dogma to support his bid for a goal. He was the last one to argue about pure bloodedness," Harry shook his head and his eyes drifted upward as he drifted into memory.
"Of course, after we had proved the idiocy of that particular concept and how it would eventually lead to destruction. It became about being able to trace some ancestry in the wizarding world. The next two or three supported those causes. Then it was about upholding the traditions that had been in place for generations," Harry rolled his eyes. "Like I said, stagnant."
"After that it was about whether or not to reveal ourselves to some of the non-magicals. A cause that my one of my own great granddaughters spearheaded. Of course I kinda lost track what their motives were after that. I didn't much care truth be told. Mostly it was some manufactured excuse for some arsewipe to try and lord his or her amazingness over others."
"Some of them would try to be embed their designs in political movements, some would be sneaky, others not so much. Eventually they would cross the line and start killing people and commit an atrocity or two to prove either their power or their conviction. If I wasn't particularly paying attention to the news, I'd get an owl or something pleading for help and take a couple of days and hunt the idiot and most of their followers down," Harry sighed a bit, "Of course it wasn't entirely a good thing,"
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