Child of Ra -- Ch. 2
Summary: Harry accidentally falls through a portal in Voldemort's lair. On the other side of his one way trip he meets a very strange group of muggles, almost as strange as himself. And where ever Harry goes, trouble is soon to follow...
Chapter 2
Some hours later…
Daniel was walking towards to the infirmary. Jack had appointed him as the interrogator since he had more sensitive social skills than the others. Not that he wasn’t curious about all the things the boy had said, he was just afraid that the boy wouldn’t react well to his disbelief in what he called ‘magic.’
When he finally reached the infirmary door, he paused. How should he approach this? He usually tried to be open minded, but this was going to be difficult. Finally he opened the door and stepped though into… a war zone.
Everything was scattered and broken. Tables were turned over; glass panes shattered, medical instruments askew. The lights were all out, except for candles. In short, it was a disaster.
Daniel stepped through gingerly, trying to avoid stepping on fallen debris. The first thing he noticed upon entering was that there was one bed that hadn’t been disrupted-Harry’s bed.
Dr. Lam came out of her office then and strode quickly over to Dr. Jackson, looking very agitated.
“What happened here? Why didn’t you call the brig and tell us?” asked Daniel.
“Because, if you would notice, we have no electricity-it all malfunctioned. And in the explosion everyone was knocked unconscious. I’m the only one to have woken up, and I’m needed here to take care of them all.”
“How? What explosion? It didn’t affect the rest of the compound,” said Daniel, confused.
“I use the term explosion relatively. What happened was that our guest went into cardiac arrest after we gave him an anesthesia to dull the pain and to make him unconscious for treatment. I believe this may have been due to an allergic reaction and I immediately connected IV fluids to flush his system of the anesthesia. I considered using a shot of adrenalin to restart the heart, but with the strangely severe reaction he had to the anesthesia and the somewhat strange bio readings we’d gathered so far as well as the IV fluids currently being used we instead used shocks to restart it. But the second the charge went through all this happened. Fortunately, it seemed to do the job, our friend here is still alive, but it wrecked havoc on the infirmary.”
Daniel walked over to Harry’s bed and righted a chair beside it to sit down. “Go on and report to Jack, I’ll stay here.”
She seemed reluctant to leave, but went none the less. After she had gone, Daniel turned back to Harry. Though he still looked really beat up, he looked much better than he had. What had the boy been forced to endure to be put in such a bad condition? He had said he was held prisoner for six months by this Voldemort character. What had the man against such a young boy?
It was then that Daniel noticed the stick lying next to the bed. He picked it up carefully, noting the perfect weighting of it and the craftsmanship employed into its creation.
“Holly with a phoenix feather core, 11 inches,” said a quiet voice to his side.
Daniel looked up to see Harry staring at him with his startling green eyes. Harry blinked and began to feel around to the side. Daniel, recognizing the search, grabbed the boy’s glasses for him.
“Thanks,” said Harry, putting them on. But once he got a good look at the room he sat up, startled.
“What happened here?” he asked.
“We’re not sure, maybe you can explain it. Your heart stopped and they used shocks to start it back up. But when they did, this happened,” said Daniel.
Harry shook his head, then stopped for a second, seeming to think on something.
Harry nodded and sighed. “I think I know, though I’ve never actually heard of it happening. It would explain why all the electricity is out. You see, magic and muggle electricity don’t mix. Around my school electronic devices won’t even work. The electric shock probably reacted with the magic in my body and caused this.”
‘Magic again. Let’s find out about this magic,’ thought Daniel.
“So, what exactly is this magic you speak of,” asked Daniel.
“It’s exactly that-magic. Not too hard to understand,” said Harry.
“Alright, but what does this magic do? Does it have a purpose?” asked Daniel, still trying to find a reasonable explanation.
Harry sat for a moment, thinking. What was the purpose of magic? He had never heard of one before.
“Well, it doesn’t have a purpose exactly. Or rather, it doesn’t serve an universal purpose, but rather it is molded to an individual purpose as needed. The wizard casts a spell which causes a transformation and manifestation of the magic to the purpose you cast the spell. Magic is merely a force wizards wield to their own purpose, yet it still has universal laws that govern it. Do you kind of understand?” Harry asked uncertainly.
“Maybe if you could show me an example,” suggested Daniel.
“Right. Ok, you have my wand,” Harry pointed at the stick Daniel was still holding. “Now, watch.” Harry stretched out his had and willed the wand to return to his hand. And, to the astonishment of Daniel, it did.
Daniel shook his head. “We’ve come across people who could do that before. It’s called telekinesis. It’s rare, but not magic.”
Harry nodded, “Ok, so you want something more substantial. But just for the record, what I just did took months of wandless magic practice, which few wizards can do, let alone wizards my age.”
“Now that you mentioned it, how old are you?” asked Daniel.
“I turned sixteen last July,” said Harry, tapping his wand against his hand as he continued to think. “What else…” He looked around and summoned a vase that had landed on the floor. He held it up and turned back to Daniel. “This is what we call transfiguration. Vertere Flora!”
Harry tapped the vase twice sharply and with a ‘blip’ it turned into a flower before Daniel’s eyes. Though the flower was of ambiguous lineage, it was most definitely not the vase it had been a second before.
Daniel sat in shock. He had wanted proof, and that was proof if anything was. He reached out and took the flower from Harry’s outstretched hand. He felt it over; checking to make sure his eyes had not deceived him.
“Impossible,” whispered Daniel. “It’s just like…”
“Magic,” said Harry, grinning.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Daniel walked slowly into the conference room, twirling a flower between his fingers, looking deep in thought. A cough from Jack brought him out of his reverie.
Jack looked at him expectantly. “Well? What did you find out? And add an explanation as to what happened with the shockers while you’re at it.”
Still holding that damn flower, Daniel walked to the front to give his briefing. He stared at the flower for a little longer, and then sat it down carefully on the table. Clearing his throat he faced the room of majors and colonels and, of course, General O’Neill.
“What I have to say will be hard for many, if not all of you, to understand and believe. But I swear on my life that it is true,” said Daniel.
He picked up the flower and began twirling it again. “In order for you to understand my report, I must make something abundantly clear; something that I too had a hard time believing even after I saw evidence of it with my own eyes. And that is this- what the boy, Harry, said earlier is true. There is such a thing as magic.”
“What?” asked Jack after a long silence.
“I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t believe it myself at first, until I asked for proof.”
“And what proof did he give you?” asked Carter. She leaned forward, obviously interested despite herself.
“This,” Daniel held up the flower.
“A flower? He showed you a flower, Daniel?” asked Jack, a sarcastic, incredulous look on his face.
“No. He showed me a vase, and then he turned it into this.” He twirled the flower between his fingers to emphasize his point.
There was another long pause in which everyone stared at the flower in disbelief.
“No that’s…”
“Impossible?” Harry finished for Carter as he took off a cloak of some strange material that appeared to have made him invisible to them.
“He has a cloaking device!” shouted one of the colonels as he and several others jumped to their feet.
“I suppose it is. It’s called an invisibility cloak. Most are made form the hairs of a demiguise, though I’ve been told that mine is… different. It used to belong to my father, but it was given to me when I was 11.”
Colonel Carter stood slowly and walked toward him. Harry looked at her suspiciously as she reached toward the cloak.
“May I?” she asked hesitantly, though her curiosity was palpable.
“Yes, but please be careful. It’s one of the few things I have left from my parents.”
She nodded and took the cloak, letting the quicksilver material flow over her hands.
“I don’t believe I’ve actually introduced myself yet. I’m General Jack O’Neill of the US Air Force and Commander of this compound,” said Jack, shaking Harry’s hand. “Now that that’s out of the way… what other neat little tricks can you do?” asked Jack innocently.
“What do you want to see?”
Jack looked around and saw a small solid steel table off to the left. “Melt that.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Melt it, sir?”
“Hell, evaporate it if you can,” Jack said, waving Harry over to it.
Harry walked over and stood beside it. He shrugged and lifted his wand. “Well, I guess if you don’t mind… dissolvere metallum!”
At first Jack could see no change, but slowly the table began to glow red, and finally, in about 5 minutes tops, the table had been melted down into a molten ball that hovered and rotated in midair.
His eyebrows shot up to his forehead.
“Cool,” was all he could think of to say.
“Did you really turn a vase into that flower?” asked Carter, disbelief still written on her face.
“Yes. It’s called transfiguration. That one was actually rather simple. If I had tried to transfigure that table it would have been a little more difficult.”
“Speaking of the table, is there any chance you could… you know… turn it back? Before I have to write up the paper work explaining how government property ended up as a puddle of ooze.” The look on O’Neill’s face when he mentioned the paperwork was so comical that Harry had a hard time biting back a laugh. Still, he felt sorry for the obviously not desk-happy General.
“I’ll see what I can do. It may not be exactly what it was before, because magical metalworking is a tricky process and metals tend to be either unresponsive or supersensitive to the more complex magic currents and magic signatures.”
“Oh, that’s fine. They’ll never know the difference.”
“Alright, since the metal is cooled down and just about solidified, I’ll levitate it back to my room and work on it later.”
“Okaaaaay…” said O’Neill as he smiled and nodded his head. Harry reflected on what he said.
“Oh yeah, and I can levitate things. It’s a low level spell I learned when I was in 1st year.”
“Riiight... Well, I think this meeting is adjourned. So you have a room already?”
“I took the liberty of setting up his quarters. They’re next door to mine,” said Daniel.
“Good. All’s settled. You can take the metal stuff back to your room then. You can get it back to me whenever.”
“Err- not exactly sir. You still haven’t said exactly what you were going to do with me.”
Oh, I haven’t have I?” said O’Neill as a look of consternation crossed his face. Then he shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later. For now you will stay with us as an ‘off-world’ guest.”
“Yes sir,” nodded Harry as he followed Daniel out of the room.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
“Well, that went well,” said Daniel as they entered Harry’s rooms.
“Do you think so? He isn’t mad about the table, is he? I mean, I know he said he wasn’t, but…”
“Nah, he wasn’t mad. As a matter of fact, I think he likes you,” said Daniel, sitting in a chair off to the side.
“You think so?” asked Harry nervously. He paced a few steps before turning towards the electric fireplace. He stared at it for a minute, the dim light casting a mysterious glow on his features.
Though still sore with several bruises, Harry had managed to heal most of his wounds that Dr. Lam hadn’t stitched up or otherwise treated. Wounds that Dr. Lam had said were somehow untreatable Harry had healed in a few moments. The possibilities this opened were immeasurable. Daniel could only hope that Jack saw this as well.
Considering all he had just learned that day, Daniel was amazed that he was taking it as well as he was.
Magic…
Who would have thought?
As Daniel continued to watch Harry, he felt a feeling of immense age roll off from the boy. How could someone so young seem so… ancient? He couldn’t understand it, but he planned to investigate.
Daniel plucked at the chair he was occupying. “You know, you still haven’t really explained how you ended up here or who you are.”
“What exactly do you want to know?” asked Harry with a sigh, sounding much older than his sixteen years.
“Well, let’s start with that scar on your forehead. How did you get that? I expect it was painful.”
“I can’t remember, but it probably was. I got it fifteen years ago when the dark wizard Voldemort murdered my parents and then tried to kill me.”
Daniel sat in shock. He hadn’t been expecting something like that.
“That’s horrible… But wait- Isn’t Voldemort the guy that was holding you prisoner?”
“The one and the same. As he tried to kill me when I was little the curse rebounded off me and came back on him, leaving him all but dead. He was reduced to little more than a ghost. Then in my 4th year at Hogwarts he had his servant kidnap me and then used an ancient ritual to restore him to his body. He used my blood as one of the reagents. I barely escaped with my life and a schoolmate of mine wasn’t even that lucky. Since then he has been waging war on the wizarding world and-more specifically-me. Then I think about three months ago he finally succeeded in capturing me during a raid. He tortured me every day until the day I escaped.”
“My god…” Daniel sat dumbfounded. No wonder the boy seemed so aged! Who could do that to a kid? Immediately he felt instilled in him a deep seated hate he had felt only once in his life extended to this Voldemort creature. Creature, because there was no way he could be human.
‘Jack has to know of this, and he is not going to like it.’
Chapter 2
Some hours later…
Daniel was walking towards to the infirmary. Jack had appointed him as the interrogator since he had more sensitive social skills than the others. Not that he wasn’t curious about all the things the boy had said, he was just afraid that the boy wouldn’t react well to his disbelief in what he called ‘magic.’
When he finally reached the infirmary door, he paused. How should he approach this? He usually tried to be open minded, but this was going to be difficult. Finally he opened the door and stepped though into… a war zone.
Everything was scattered and broken. Tables were turned over; glass panes shattered, medical instruments askew. The lights were all out, except for candles. In short, it was a disaster.
Daniel stepped through gingerly, trying to avoid stepping on fallen debris. The first thing he noticed upon entering was that there was one bed that hadn’t been disrupted-Harry’s bed.
Dr. Lam came out of her office then and strode quickly over to Dr. Jackson, looking very agitated.
“What happened here? Why didn’t you call the brig and tell us?” asked Daniel.
“Because, if you would notice, we have no electricity-it all malfunctioned. And in the explosion everyone was knocked unconscious. I’m the only one to have woken up, and I’m needed here to take care of them all.”
“How? What explosion? It didn’t affect the rest of the compound,” said Daniel, confused.
“I use the term explosion relatively. What happened was that our guest went into cardiac arrest after we gave him an anesthesia to dull the pain and to make him unconscious for treatment. I believe this may have been due to an allergic reaction and I immediately connected IV fluids to flush his system of the anesthesia. I considered using a shot of adrenalin to restart the heart, but with the strangely severe reaction he had to the anesthesia and the somewhat strange bio readings we’d gathered so far as well as the IV fluids currently being used we instead used shocks to restart it. But the second the charge went through all this happened. Fortunately, it seemed to do the job, our friend here is still alive, but it wrecked havoc on the infirmary.”
Daniel walked over to Harry’s bed and righted a chair beside it to sit down. “Go on and report to Jack, I’ll stay here.”
She seemed reluctant to leave, but went none the less. After she had gone, Daniel turned back to Harry. Though he still looked really beat up, he looked much better than he had. What had the boy been forced to endure to be put in such a bad condition? He had said he was held prisoner for six months by this Voldemort character. What had the man against such a young boy?
It was then that Daniel noticed the stick lying next to the bed. He picked it up carefully, noting the perfect weighting of it and the craftsmanship employed into its creation.
“Holly with a phoenix feather core, 11 inches,” said a quiet voice to his side.
Daniel looked up to see Harry staring at him with his startling green eyes. Harry blinked and began to feel around to the side. Daniel, recognizing the search, grabbed the boy’s glasses for him.
“Thanks,” said Harry, putting them on. But once he got a good look at the room he sat up, startled.
“What happened here?” he asked.
“We’re not sure, maybe you can explain it. Your heart stopped and they used shocks to start it back up. But when they did, this happened,” said Daniel.
Harry shook his head, then stopped for a second, seeming to think on something.
Harry nodded and sighed. “I think I know, though I’ve never actually heard of it happening. It would explain why all the electricity is out. You see, magic and muggle electricity don’t mix. Around my school electronic devices won’t even work. The electric shock probably reacted with the magic in my body and caused this.”
‘Magic again. Let’s find out about this magic,’ thought Daniel.
“So, what exactly is this magic you speak of,” asked Daniel.
“It’s exactly that-magic. Not too hard to understand,” said Harry.
“Alright, but what does this magic do? Does it have a purpose?” asked Daniel, still trying to find a reasonable explanation.
Harry sat for a moment, thinking. What was the purpose of magic? He had never heard of one before.
“Well, it doesn’t have a purpose exactly. Or rather, it doesn’t serve an universal purpose, but rather it is molded to an individual purpose as needed. The wizard casts a spell which causes a transformation and manifestation of the magic to the purpose you cast the spell. Magic is merely a force wizards wield to their own purpose, yet it still has universal laws that govern it. Do you kind of understand?” Harry asked uncertainly.
“Maybe if you could show me an example,” suggested Daniel.
“Right. Ok, you have my wand,” Harry pointed at the stick Daniel was still holding. “Now, watch.” Harry stretched out his had and willed the wand to return to his hand. And, to the astonishment of Daniel, it did.
Daniel shook his head. “We’ve come across people who could do that before. It’s called telekinesis. It’s rare, but not magic.”
Harry nodded, “Ok, so you want something more substantial. But just for the record, what I just did took months of wandless magic practice, which few wizards can do, let alone wizards my age.”
“Now that you mentioned it, how old are you?” asked Daniel.
“I turned sixteen last July,” said Harry, tapping his wand against his hand as he continued to think. “What else…” He looked around and summoned a vase that had landed on the floor. He held it up and turned back to Daniel. “This is what we call transfiguration. Vertere Flora!”
Harry tapped the vase twice sharply and with a ‘blip’ it turned into a flower before Daniel’s eyes. Though the flower was of ambiguous lineage, it was most definitely not the vase it had been a second before.
Daniel sat in shock. He had wanted proof, and that was proof if anything was. He reached out and took the flower from Harry’s outstretched hand. He felt it over; checking to make sure his eyes had not deceived him.
“Impossible,” whispered Daniel. “It’s just like…”
“Magic,” said Harry, grinning.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Daniel walked slowly into the conference room, twirling a flower between his fingers, looking deep in thought. A cough from Jack brought him out of his reverie.
Jack looked at him expectantly. “Well? What did you find out? And add an explanation as to what happened with the shockers while you’re at it.”
Still holding that damn flower, Daniel walked to the front to give his briefing. He stared at the flower for a little longer, and then sat it down carefully on the table. Clearing his throat he faced the room of majors and colonels and, of course, General O’Neill.
“What I have to say will be hard for many, if not all of you, to understand and believe. But I swear on my life that it is true,” said Daniel.
He picked up the flower and began twirling it again. “In order for you to understand my report, I must make something abundantly clear; something that I too had a hard time believing even after I saw evidence of it with my own eyes. And that is this- what the boy, Harry, said earlier is true. There is such a thing as magic.”
“What?” asked Jack after a long silence.
“I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t believe it myself at first, until I asked for proof.”
“And what proof did he give you?” asked Carter. She leaned forward, obviously interested despite herself.
“This,” Daniel held up the flower.
“A flower? He showed you a flower, Daniel?” asked Jack, a sarcastic, incredulous look on his face.
“No. He showed me a vase, and then he turned it into this.” He twirled the flower between his fingers to emphasize his point.
There was another long pause in which everyone stared at the flower in disbelief.
“No that’s…”
“Impossible?” Harry finished for Carter as he took off a cloak of some strange material that appeared to have made him invisible to them.
“He has a cloaking device!” shouted one of the colonels as he and several others jumped to their feet.
“I suppose it is. It’s called an invisibility cloak. Most are made form the hairs of a demiguise, though I’ve been told that mine is… different. It used to belong to my father, but it was given to me when I was 11.”
Colonel Carter stood slowly and walked toward him. Harry looked at her suspiciously as she reached toward the cloak.
“May I?” she asked hesitantly, though her curiosity was palpable.
“Yes, but please be careful. It’s one of the few things I have left from my parents.”
She nodded and took the cloak, letting the quicksilver material flow over her hands.
“I don’t believe I’ve actually introduced myself yet. I’m General Jack O’Neill of the US Air Force and Commander of this compound,” said Jack, shaking Harry’s hand. “Now that that’s out of the way… what other neat little tricks can you do?” asked Jack innocently.
“What do you want to see?”
Jack looked around and saw a small solid steel table off to the left. “Melt that.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Melt it, sir?”
“Hell, evaporate it if you can,” Jack said, waving Harry over to it.
Harry walked over and stood beside it. He shrugged and lifted his wand. “Well, I guess if you don’t mind… dissolvere metallum!”
At first Jack could see no change, but slowly the table began to glow red, and finally, in about 5 minutes tops, the table had been melted down into a molten ball that hovered and rotated in midair.
His eyebrows shot up to his forehead.
“Cool,” was all he could think of to say.
“Did you really turn a vase into that flower?” asked Carter, disbelief still written on her face.
“Yes. It’s called transfiguration. That one was actually rather simple. If I had tried to transfigure that table it would have been a little more difficult.”
“Speaking of the table, is there any chance you could… you know… turn it back? Before I have to write up the paper work explaining how government property ended up as a puddle of ooze.” The look on O’Neill’s face when he mentioned the paperwork was so comical that Harry had a hard time biting back a laugh. Still, he felt sorry for the obviously not desk-happy General.
“I’ll see what I can do. It may not be exactly what it was before, because magical metalworking is a tricky process and metals tend to be either unresponsive or supersensitive to the more complex magic currents and magic signatures.”
“Oh, that’s fine. They’ll never know the difference.”
“Alright, since the metal is cooled down and just about solidified, I’ll levitate it back to my room and work on it later.”
“Okaaaaay…” said O’Neill as he smiled and nodded his head. Harry reflected on what he said.
“Oh yeah, and I can levitate things. It’s a low level spell I learned when I was in 1st year.”
“Riiight... Well, I think this meeting is adjourned. So you have a room already?”
“I took the liberty of setting up his quarters. They’re next door to mine,” said Daniel.
“Good. All’s settled. You can take the metal stuff back to your room then. You can get it back to me whenever.”
“Err- not exactly sir. You still haven’t said exactly what you were going to do with me.”
Oh, I haven’t have I?” said O’Neill as a look of consternation crossed his face. Then he shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later. For now you will stay with us as an ‘off-world’ guest.”
“Yes sir,” nodded Harry as he followed Daniel out of the room.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
“Well, that went well,” said Daniel as they entered Harry’s rooms.
“Do you think so? He isn’t mad about the table, is he? I mean, I know he said he wasn’t, but…”
“Nah, he wasn’t mad. As a matter of fact, I think he likes you,” said Daniel, sitting in a chair off to the side.
“You think so?” asked Harry nervously. He paced a few steps before turning towards the electric fireplace. He stared at it for a minute, the dim light casting a mysterious glow on his features.
Though still sore with several bruises, Harry had managed to heal most of his wounds that Dr. Lam hadn’t stitched up or otherwise treated. Wounds that Dr. Lam had said were somehow untreatable Harry had healed in a few moments. The possibilities this opened were immeasurable. Daniel could only hope that Jack saw this as well.
Considering all he had just learned that day, Daniel was amazed that he was taking it as well as he was.
Magic…
Who would have thought?
As Daniel continued to watch Harry, he felt a feeling of immense age roll off from the boy. How could someone so young seem so… ancient? He couldn’t understand it, but he planned to investigate.
Daniel plucked at the chair he was occupying. “You know, you still haven’t really explained how you ended up here or who you are.”
“What exactly do you want to know?” asked Harry with a sigh, sounding much older than his sixteen years.
“Well, let’s start with that scar on your forehead. How did you get that? I expect it was painful.”
“I can’t remember, but it probably was. I got it fifteen years ago when the dark wizard Voldemort murdered my parents and then tried to kill me.”
Daniel sat in shock. He hadn’t been expecting something like that.
“That’s horrible… But wait- Isn’t Voldemort the guy that was holding you prisoner?”
“The one and the same. As he tried to kill me when I was little the curse rebounded off me and came back on him, leaving him all but dead. He was reduced to little more than a ghost. Then in my 4th year at Hogwarts he had his servant kidnap me and then used an ancient ritual to restore him to his body. He used my blood as one of the reagents. I barely escaped with my life and a schoolmate of mine wasn’t even that lucky. Since then he has been waging war on the wizarding world and-more specifically-me. Then I think about three months ago he finally succeeded in capturing me during a raid. He tortured me every day until the day I escaped.”
“My god…” Daniel sat dumbfounded. No wonder the boy seemed so aged! Who could do that to a kid? Immediately he felt instilled in him a deep seated hate he had felt only once in his life extended to this Voldemort creature. Creature, because there was no way he could be human.
‘Jack has to know of this, and he is not going to like it.’