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EVIL AUTHOR DAY DISCLAIMER: Read at your own risk - especially since I have a contrary muse: the more other people want something written, the more said muse mule-sits (i.e., sits down like a mule that doesn't want to be led anywhere. Good luck getting it to move once it's made up its mind…). That said, I never say never, so any of these might be completed. I just don't know when/if.
Further to that, if anyone should be inspired to continue any of these, or write your own with a similar concept, or take any other inspiration from them, please do! Just drop a comment so I can go read it. *grin*
This is a sequel to Ad Astra per Magicae, which you probably should read before you read this story, though I hope this stands reasonably well on its own.
This is very AU from Stargate: Atlantis and somewhat AU from Harry Potter (what is this "epilogue" of which you speak?), so things happen differently in this story than in canon.
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"The only problem with the stargate," Harry Potter said from his place beside his cousin, John Sheppard, in the cockpit of the craft they’d called a Puddle Jumper as John navigated it toward the stargate, "is that it's too damn fast."
John’s snort echoed in the cabin. "Says the man who can teleport wherever he wants to go."
"Apparate," Harry corrected mildly, then paused while John spoke with the gate control officer and cleared their departure.
"What’s wrong with fast?" John asked as he aimed the Jumper toward the gate.
Harry’s answer was delayed while they transited through the gate and into space above the planet they’d designated P-666 and then while John reported their safe arrival.
"So what’s wrong with fast?" John repeated as he guided the Jumper toward the Wraith’s base.
"Doesn’t give us time to talk."
John glanced over at him. "Sounds serious."
Harry shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable despite his certainty that the subject needed to be addressed. "Tactical - no, strategic decision to be made."
"Okay." John looked away to do something to the Jumper, and they banked away from the planet.
"Where are we going?" Harry asked.
"That way." John gestured ahead of them, and Harry had the sense that the Jumper had slowed. "More specifically, we're going after the MALP. No sense either wasting it or allowing it to fall into enemy hands."
Harry nodded. The MALP would've continued on its course as it left the gate, unimpeded by air resistance or gravity. Locking onto the signal it was, presumably, still transmitting, should be simple.
"So," John said, though his attention was mostly on the control. "Strategic decision?"
"You know I can cast a Memory Charm."
Harry's words seemed to drop into a well. John's lips thinned, but he gave no other outward reaction.
Harry let the silence linger, until it was broken by John's quiet, "Got it. If I get in front of it and open the airlock, think you can summon it into the bay?"
"Sure." Harry accepted the change of subject and rose from his seat to move toward the airlock.
Five minutes later, the MALP was secured with clamps that appeared at his mental command. Ancient technology might not be magic, but there were times it came remarkably close.
Harry retook his seat - what he assumed was the co-pilot's seat - and waited for John to speak.
"I thought you consider those unethical," John said finally, the curve of P-666 swelling before them.
"I do," Harry agreed immediately. "Under normal, peacetime conditions, there should be no reason to use a Memory Charm on someone. Well, very few reasons," he amended, "preferably with a court order and always in consultation with a healer. But these aren't normal, peacetime conditions. Memory charming the Wraith - any Wraith that might have gotten close enough to us to pick up anything about Earth - is just good operational security."
John guided the Jumper toward the Wraith base. "Okay. I don't disagree about operational security, let alone protecting Earth. You didn't bring this up before because-?
"Magic is terrible," Harry said. "Fun and amazing, but also terrible. Right now, the non-magicals on Atlantis see us as an asset. I never want them to see us as a threat - and how can a Memory Charm be anything but a threat? At the very least, Memory Charms can get rid of evidence of crimes, and every single person who came to Atlantis with us is smart enough to realize that."
John gave an exaggerated groan as he brought the Jumper in for a smooth landing. "And you just dropped a whole new can of worms in my lap, thank you very much." He glared at Harry. "Our charter and operational guidelines, our laws if you will, don't include magic."
Harry grinned widely, and as innocently as he knew how. "Sorry."
John snorted. "Save it for someone who didn't get into just as much trouble as you did when we were kids. Why's the base still intact? I thought Fiendfyre destroyed everything in its path."
Harry started, then frowned at the view out the front windscreen - of a Wraith base that bore no visible signs of having been set ablaze only hours before.
Harry shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. "Maybe Ancient technology has really good fire suppression systems?"
"Or maybe it's somehow based in magic, too," John muttered and powered down the engine. "I know what you said last time - about I'm the only pilot so I had to stay behind. But this time-?"
Harry nodded. "This time, we go together. Magic and tech."
"We'll breach, scan for life signs," John said. "If any, we bug out. If not, we go exploring."
"Sounds like a plan. But let me Memory Charm the Wraith first. Just in case."
"I'll check in with Atlantis."
Harry nodded and moved to the back of the Jumper, where they'd left the Wraith queen strapped into a chair.
Focusing his will, Harry cast, "Obliviate!"
And then he cast it again - just to be sure. Then once more for luck.
Then he thought of exactly what the Wraith could do if they ever found Earth and cast it again, with as much focus and strength of will behind it as he could summon - and that, he could finally admit, was quite a lot.
"Is four casts enough?" John's somewhat amused question came from behind him.
"Given what she could reveal? Maybe not," Harry answered and cast the Memory Charm again, just because.
When he turned, he saw that John had already strapped on his tac vest and was slinging his P-90 into place.
He took the hint and summoned his armor from the dimensional store around his neck, pulling the dragonhide duster on without comment.
"I told them three hours to explore," John said, and Harry nodded. That seemed like a reasonable time, especially since they could use all of it before he apparated them back to the jumper.
"Let's go, then."
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Even though he'd helped come up with the plan, John felt uncomfortable stalking toward the Wraith base that should be a burned-out ruin with the body of the Wraith queen floating along with them.
"The other reason I don't like stargates and portkeys and apparating," Harry offered out of the blue, "is that I do my best thinking when I'm flying."
"We're alike in that," John murmured. "Potter family trait, maybe?"
"Maybe," Harry said. "Still, this time, the idea occurred to me before we finished and got back to Atlantis."
John glanced at his cousin and paused before breaching the forest near the base. "What idea?"
"This."
John turned to fully face his cousin, and in that half-second, the body of the Wraith queen became…a stick?
With a casual flick of his wand, Harry sent the stick flying off into the forest.
"Why?" John asked.
Harry gave him a lopsided grin that reminded him uncomfortably of the one he saw in the mirror. "She'll be impossible to find. And if some animal - are there animals on this planet? - finds and chews or steps on her, I don't think it'll count as killing her."
John considered that for a moment before nodding. "Good enough. Any life signs?"
Harry cast a series of spells. "Nothing. But if Fiendfyre didn't destroy the base…"
John nodded grimly and readied his weapon before continuing toward the base.
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Twenty minutes later, they'd gotten further into the base than they had on the rescue mission, and John was grinning as Harry examined the pristine walls around them.
"Some kind of magical metal, maybe?" Harry muttered, running his fingertips along the wall.
He'd already cast half a dozen different spells at it while John kept watch for any surviving Wraith - or any other intruders. So far, though, he and his cousin seemed to be alone.
Several combat postings meant that John knew better than to get complacent and assume that just because they hadn't run into anyone else yet, they wouldn't in the perhaps immediate future.
But they were supposed to be investigating not just how the base had survived Fiendfyre, but also the Wraith themselves. So…
"Harry."
Harry didn't turn from what he was doing, and John supposed he should be proud of the trust in him that demonstrated - Harry was a warrior, had been since before they were teens, and earning the trust of a warrior when you hadn't fought beside them wasn't easy.
But in this moment, "Henry James Potter."
Harry jerked and whirled to face John. "What?"
"Not done yet," John said. "You can figure that out later."
"Right. Sorry." Harry's wand slid back into his hand and, with a final glance at the wall, fell into step with John once more. "That wall's just...strange."
John chuckled quietly and continued down the corridor. He would never admit aloud how familiar, even comfortable, the base felt - as if he were back on base in Afghanistan.
A deserted base, perhaps, but a base nonetheless, judging by its layout. It was certainly no palace, and not a warehouse or even a hotel or condo complex. No, this place had a quasi-military feel that John could have found enticing if it weren't for the beings who had formerly inhabited it.
Some instinct led him deeper into the base, several levels down, and he paused in what appeared to be a central … not a lobby, and not a command center, but some odd combination of the two.
From beside him came Harry's quiet, "John? What is it?"
"Not sure," John murmured back, "but let's find out."
"I'll set up perimeter wards."
John nodded and stepped further into the room, clearing it with the familiarity of long practice. When he'd completed his circuit of the room, he checked the life sign detector the Jumper had provided him, cautiously relieved when he found it clear. That meant he didn't have to worry about the doors on two walls that appeared firmly closed, at least for now, so he left them that way and moved to a command console along one side.
At least, it looked like the command console on Atlantis, so John circled around it to examine it more closely-
-and cursed under his breath when he realized the labels and other markings were in the same script he'd originally noticed in Antarctica.
"Problem?" Harry asked.
"Need your runic knowledge," John answered and stepped back to allow Harry access to the console.
Harry let out a low whistle as he studied the command pad. "Bugger me."
"No thanks," John quipped. "Not my type, and we're related."
Harry shot him a vulgar gesture but stayed focused on the console. "If I'm reading these right…"
Before John could question him, Harry tapped a few of the oversize keys on the console pad, and a drawer of sorts slid out of the wall next to John, almost clipping him at the knee, but he jumped aside and avoided the contact.
Then John was staring down into the drawer. "Are those-?"
"ZPMs," Harry answered. "Three. If I'm reading this correctly, two are completely full and one is half."
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As the Atlantis mission's commanding officer, John made the tactical decision not to broadcast the news that Harry had found three ZPMs. Instead, he asked Harry to conceal them on the Jumper, so that no one but the two of them could see them.
Harry looked at him oddly, but apparently trusted his, "Not forever - just long enough for me to check something in the mission charter," because Harry cast the spells without further comment.
Upon their return to the city, he and Harry went through a basic post-mission checkup - basic because the medical team hadn't yet gotten fully set up - and then he found a laptop and called up the mission charter.
Half an hour later, he wandered down toward the space the scientists had already claimed as their own.
Rodney McKay was deep in conversation with Radek Zelenka when John entered the room. John let the ebb and flow of their conversation pass over him, an odd kind of white noise since he understood maybe two words in ten - not counting particles and conjunctions - and the context of the discussion was beyond him.
Finally, McKay looked up, and his expression was more curious than angry. "What?"
"Got a minute?" John asked. "There's something you should see."
McKay studied him for a moment, then apparently decided that John wouldn't waste his time, because he spoke briefly to Zelenka - more science that John didn't understand - and joined John at the door.
"What?" McKay demanded as John angled them toward the Jumper bay.
"You need to see it to believe it," John said. "Seriously. I could tell you, but you'd insult my intelligence, and I don't want to ruin my good mood."
McKay gave him a look somewhere between curiosity and exasperation, but kept his questions to himself.
Just before they reached the Jumper bay, John asked conversationally, "How many ZPMs does it take to power the city fully?"
"At least ten," McKay answered immediately. "There are outlets for ten of them in the command center, but that doesn't mean we haven't found other outlets elsewhere. Why?"
"What do you think would happen with one full ZPM?"
McKay frowned. "I'm - not sure. We haven't found an operating manual, but I would think that someone, sometime, set a waking up protocol so that priority systems come online first."
"That does make sense," John agreed and turned up the ramp to the Jumper he and Harry had taken out. "Let's just hope that someone's priorities and ours are similar."
"What do you-?" McKay began, but broke off as John reached into the compartment Harry had charmed and withdrew the half-full ZPM.
"Oh, my God," McKay breathed, practically snatching the ZPM from John. "It's not full, but it's a start."
"That one's not," John agreed, "but these two are."
He withdrew the other two ZPMs, the two that were fully charged, and showed them to McKay.
McKay squealed.
John raised an eyebrow, but didn't otherwise comment. This would be blackmail material for years.
McKay fumbled for a moment, apparently wanting to carry all three ZPMs by himself, but John kept a firm grip on the two full ones.
"Let's go," McKay all but shouted, practically quivering with excitement. "Let's install them!"
"Only these two," John said. "That one, we send back to Earth."
:=:=:=:=: CHAPTER TWO
Three months later
Hermione Granger really wished that Ron Weasley hadn't come to her office at the Magical United Nations, plopped himself in a chair across from her, and settled in for a chat.
Not that she minded seeing him, necessarily, but she'd left Britain after the war and had no real interest in the lives of anyone still living there, save those few she'd chosen to keep in touch with. Ron was one of those few to whom she'd given her contact information, and the only one so far who'd assumed that because he knew where she worked, he was welcome to drop in anytime.
To be fair, at the moment her desk was relatively clear - there were a couple of international treaties that needed renegotiation, and she'd been asked to consult on the magical aspects of them - so she had no real reason to complain at the interruption.
Until he said, "When are you coming back?"
"I don't know that I ever am," she said.
"But why?" he asked. "We all miss you."
But I don't miss you. Not like I'd have to in order to want to come back.
Hermione kept the words firmly behind her lips because saying them aloud would just lead to an argument, and her day was going too well to end it that way.
Instead, she said, "I'm enjoying my work here. It's meaningful and I'm accomplishing a lot - more than I ever could in Britain."
"I want you to come home," Ron said, and before she could decide how to respond to that, he'd opened his palm.
Hermione stared at the diamond ring that glittered in the glow of the harsh overhead lighting.
"I want you to come home," Ron repeated, "and marry me."
She jerked back, looking up at Ron with what must be a completely dumbfounded expression. "What did you say?"
Ron swallowed, nerves evident in his expression. "I want you to marry me and come home."
The great machine that was Hermione's mind froze as she stared at her longtime friend. He hadn't really asked her that, had he?
Yes, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered, he had.
She was already shaking her head when she said, "No."
The tips of his ears reddened. "Herms-"
She cut him off. "And that would be why the answer is no. Actually," she added as her mind began to reboot, "it's the latest in a long line of reasons why the answer is no."
"What?" Ron shook his head. "I don't understand. I love you!"
"You have a bloody horrible way of showing that," Hermione snapped, then took a breath to steady herself. There was nothing to be gained by getting into a shouting match - another shouting match, that little voice said - in the middle of the workday.
He glared at her. "Just because I can't afford a bigger diamond-"
"It's not about how big the bloody diamond is. It's about respect. You may love me, or you may not, but you've never respected me."
"Of course I do!"
"I could point out a hundred things you've said or done that prove otherwise," Hermione said quietly. "But the biggest, the absolute worst, is that you abandoned me in the middle of a war zone. You left me to face being killed, captured, tortured or raped. I may eventually forgive you for it, but I'll never forget it."
"But-"
"There are no buts, Ronald," Hermione snapped. "You and Harry argued - and you left. You abandoned me!"
"And Harry."
The quiet voice that came from the doorway made Hermione look up, blinking at the man standing there. He wore a military uniform of some kind - American, she thought, though she didn't know whether it was Army or Navy or whatever - and a grim expression.
Then she saw his messy dark hair and smiled.
Ron, though, had found a target for his anger and, maybe, embarrassment. "You don't know anything about it!"
"I know more than you think," the man - John Sheppard - said flatly.
"How?" Ron snarled.
"Harry's my cousin," John said. "He told me."
"Cousin?!" Ron leapt to his feet, drawing his wand as he did. "You lousy-!"
"Ron!" Hermione shouted. "Not that cousin!"
But Ron was already waving his wand - though she didn't recognize the movement - and she was fumbling for her own when another voice rang out - "Stupefy!" - a red beam of light came from behind John, and Ron collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
"Thanks," John murmured and stepped further into the room, allowing the person behind him - a man with dark hair and a face with lines that seemed to come from smiling - further into the room.
"And t'think," the man said with a pronounced Scottish burr, "I thought he was a war hero."
"He is," Hermione protested.
"Not if he abandoned Harry Potter - and you - in the middle of it," the man snapped. "Desertion during wartime carries a death penalty in much of the world. He's no hero, and it'll be my pleasure to get him out of your sight."
"Thanks," John murmured again. "Tell the general he only threatened me because he thought I was Harry's other cousin."
"I'll tell him, aye," the Scotsman said, "but I dinna ken it'll do any good."
"Don't be gone too long," John said. "You still need to be our bonder."
"Bonder?" Hermione frowned. "You're making an Unbreakable Vow to me?"
John laughed briefly. "Other way around, actually."
Hermione felt her eyebrows fly up. "You want me to swear to you? About what?"
"I can't tell you until you swear," John said reasonably before turning to his companion. "How long will you be, Carson?"
Carson - and was that his surname or his given name? - shrugged. "Ideally, just a few minutes. I'll bond you before I go." He threw another Stunner at Ron before picking up Ron's wand - and, Hermione noted distantly - the ring.
She frowned at John, and he gave her a cheeky grin. "You'll want to hear this," he said. "It'll blow your mind."
Hermione found herself smiling back before she thought about it. When she did think, she realized this was Harry's cousin and friend, and if Harry trusted John, which she knew he did, then she could, too.
"Right," she said. "What am I swearing?"
"To only discuss what you learn from me today with people who already know the secret," John said. Then his expression shifted to something more sober. "I'm on that list, and so is Harry."
Harry? What could Harry and his Squib cousin have in common that required an Unbreakable Vow of secrecy?
There was only one way to find out, as that little voice in the back of her mind smugly informed her. "All right."
The wizard - Carson - led her through the Unbreakable Vow with admirable brevity, and she was pleased but not surprised that the vow was as simple as John had said it would be.
"Right," Carson said as soon as the glow faded from her and John's joined hands. "I'll get this one to the General. Call if you need a ride home."
"Sure thing, Dad," John said, and Carson just grinned before laying a hand on Ron's shoulder and disappearing.
Hermione blinked. "That - wasn't a Portkey or Apparation."