Fic: "Alchemical Solution (Swish and Flick Remix)," SGA-Harry Potter fusion
Title: Alchemical Solution (Swish and Flick Remix)
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Harry Potter fusion
Characters: John, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 6,733
Summary: Four students have been feeling out of place. Hogwarts gives them a nudge.
Content notes: None, I don't think.
A/N: Many, many thanks to synn for helping me through the writing process. A few lines are taken from the show. Please forgive me for playing fast and loose with timelines and the HP universe.
Read at the AO3 or below.
John sighed as he trudged up the last set of stairs on the way back to the Gryffindor common room after his regular Friday afternoon run. The days were growing chilly and short; soon he would have to forego his after-class loop through the Hogwarts grounds. He wondered if he could blame his mood on the change of seasons, or maybe even on his aching thighs and cold nose. But he'd been feeling kind of down for longer than that.
The bone-deep sound of grinding stone interrupted his thoughts. With the reflexes every Hogwarts student learned in their first month, John braced himself just as the staircase shuddered and swung away from the wall.
"Dammit," he said to nobody in particular. "I was almost there."
From somewhere above his line of sight, the Fat Lady tsked at him. "Language, young man!"
Shoulders drooping, he called back, "Sorry, ma'am."
He held on as the staircase retracted several flights down the tower and took him on a joy ride across one of the atriums that served as a transit hub. "Wrong way, Shep!" Mitch and Holland called from a staircase going the other direction; John flipped them the bird and waited for them to fly out of sight before he let his smirk fade. Those guys were fun enough for a Hogsmeade trip or a common room party, just as Lorne and Bates and the other guys from Quidditch were cool on the field, but he couldn't shake the sense that something was missing.
Finally, the stairs deposited him across the castle. Visions of a hot shower retreated as he stepped into the hallway and realized how far out of the way he'd come. Well, at least he was on the seventh floor again. Probably. Maybe. Hm.
Halfway down the corridor, he paused, not sure he was going the right way. He doubled back, then paused a second time. No; he was pretty sure the first way had been right. He started walking again. Only... had that door been there a second ago? Weird. He remembered passing the tapestry with the flailing trolls on the opposite wall, but not the door, unremarkable as it was.
He was about to shrug it off when he heard footsteps. He turned to find a pretty girl in Hufflepuff robes coming down the hall where he'd been headed.
"Oh," she said when she saw him. "Hello. Have you been following the portraits too?"
She had a nice smile and amazing cheekbones. John thought his ears might be going red. "The...?"
"It was very strange. I was leaving choir practice when the wizards who play cards in the oil painting outside the Great Hall whispered at me and gestured toward the stairs. At the top, the Lady of Shalott pointed me down the corridor. Someone has been waiting for me at every junction, until I found myself here. Did that not also happen to you?"
John shook his head. "I just got sidetracked by some moving stairs."
"I see."
She looked at him. He looked at her.
"Well, I suppose I'll keep going, then," she said. He was about to wave goodbye when she added, "Would you like to join me?"
"Uh. Sure."
She held out her hand. "I am Teyla Emmagan."
Oh-she was that exchange student people talked about sometimes. Cool.
He shook. "I'm John. John Sheppard."
"Yes. I know." She gave him another nice smile and started walking.
His ears got even warmer as he followed. "You do?"
"My friends Amelia, Sora and Larrin are on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. I've seen you play."
John had a crystal clear memory of Larrin smacking a bludger right at his face last season. It was the closest anyone outside Slytherin had come to knocking him off his broom. He'd had a shiner that not even Madame Pomfrey could fully bring down.
"You are very good," Teyla was saying. John ducked his head.
They hadn't gone far when a suit of armor John had passed earlier held up a hand to halt them. The creak of ancient, unoiled metal startled him almost as much as seeing the suit move in the first place. He'd only heard rumors about that. Like that they walked around at night when no one was watching, and fought duels over summer hols that rang through the empty halls.
Teyla didn't seem scared, though, so he just went with it.
"Have we come too far?" she asked the suit. "Or should I not have brought John?"
With a series of nails-on-chalkboard scrapes, the suit pointed slowly at Teyla, then at John, and then back the way they had just come.
Teyla's brow furrowed. "Are you sure?"
The suit didn't move.
"'Curiouser and curiouser,'" Teyla said as they about-faced. "I read that in an English Muggle book when I moved here. Do you like Lewis Carroll?"
Normally he'd just shrug, but something about Teyla made him want to tell the truth. "My fifth-grade teacher read us 'Jabberwocky' before I switched to Wizarding school. It sort of made my brain hurt," he admitted. "I like the Disney movie, though."
They stopped in front of the mysterious door again. "This appears to be the only object of interest between the armor and the last portrait I passed," Teyla mused.
"Other than Barnabas the Barmy," John pointed out, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the tapestry where Barnabas was still trying to make the trolls do squats or pliés or whatever. "Maybe that makes us Alice, about to open the door to wonderland." Seemed kind of redundant, though, given that he'd already gone through the looking glass coming to Hogwarts in the first place.
He made a face, considering the doorknob. It seemed innocuous enough, but then, so had his Transfiguration exam before the stupid beetle had jumped up and latched onto his neck.
Pounding footsteps echoed from the end of the hall Teyla had originally come from. A moment later, a small four-legged animal rounded the corner at full speed, followed by a large guy brandishing his wand. As they got closer, the animal resolved into a kneazle and the guy into Ronon Dex. Something glinted in the kneazle's mouth.
"Would that be the white rabbit, then?" Teyla asked.
This day was starting to feel strange enough that John didn't think he would do a double-take if the kneazle took out a pocket watch and exclaimed that it was late. But all it did was dart up to them... and stop. It turned to look at its pursuer and-pointedly, John would have sworn-dropped what looked like a necklace to the stone floor.
Ronon Dex slowed to a trot and came to a stop by them as well. He was tall and fit and more buff than John could ever hope to be, but he was breathing kind of hard.
"Stupid cat," he said in the low, deep voice that was the envy of half the guys in Gryffindor whose own voices hadn't broken yet. He dropped to a crouch and scooped up the necklace. "Dodged all my Stupefies. Had to chase it all the way from the archery field."
That might have been the most words John had heard him speak in a row since Ronon had shown up at Hogwarts a month into the school year.
"I believe it is a kneazle," Teyla said, crouching to scritch it behind the ears. The kneazle purred and butted up into her hand.
"Whatever." Ronon stood and tied the necklace back on. John had heard that the bone on the end of that cord had come from the skull of a Dementor that Ronon had killed with his bare hands, after it and the others had destroyed Ronon's whole village. He'd also heard it was a piece of one of the neo-Death Eaters who'd sent the Dementors in the first place.
Ronon nodded at the wall. "What's in there?"
"That's what we were just trying to figure out."
"Could've sworn it wasn't there ten minutes ago," John said.
Ronon made a face. "This castle is weird."
As if on cue, voices floated up from the stairwell beyond the suit of armor. Soon they became distinct enough for John to make out the words.
"Stop harassing me, you cretin!" a boy shouted.
Someone laughed, and then the same boy said, "Hey! Stop that! Give that back!"
John recognized that voice; it belonged to the smartest but most annoying guy in Ravenclaw. Sure enough, here came the lanky form of Rodney "Don't Call Me Meredith" McKay, clutching the strap of his usual overstuffed satchel with one hand and trying to protect his head with the other.
John had figured Kolya or Todd or one of the other Slytherin bullies was bothering him again, but the culprit turned out to be none other than Peeves the poltergeist.
"Ow!" McKay protested as Peeves whapped him upside the head with what looked like a textbook. "I need my brain for thinking!"
Peeves cackled and drove him onward.
"Help," McKay cried when he spotted John and the others. "He's been hounding me ever since I tried to go into the Astronomy Tower, and-ow!-now he's got my Advanced Arithmancy book."
"Merry merry Meredith," sang Peeves. The kneazle hissed at him as he soared nearer. "No stargazing for you tonight, oh no."
McKay got close enough to duck behind Ronon, who was a good head taller. Ronon raised his eyebrows and looked back over his shoulder at him, but didn't otherwise seem perturbed.
Anyway, McKay didn't have to worry; Peeves dropped his loot without ceremony and clapped instead. "Oh goody, you're all here! Now the fun can begin."
The four of them exchanged looks. "What do you mean, 'all'?" asked Teyla.
"I don't have time to waste on your infantile pranks," said McKay. "Radek's waiting for me."
Peeves dove for the textbook and Rodney darted behind Ronon again like a turtle jerking its head back into its shell. John snatched up the book before anyone else could start battering someone with it. He got enough Beating at Quidditch practice, thank you very much. He handed it to McKay, who scowled as he dusted it off.
"Okay, okay."
John braced himself for whatever else Peeves had in mind, but the ghost only did a midair somersault and then floated away, still cackling.
John took out his wand. "Guess we should see what's in there."
The others got out their wands too and gathered behind him.
John stepped up and tentatively laid his left palm on the wood. Sometimes... It was hard to describe, but sometimes he could feel Hogwarts. As if the magic thrumming through its walls could communicate with something deep down in his cells. This door felt... benevolent. Like standing on the stoop of his grandma's house.
He turned the knob and went in.
*
It was a huge room, with a vaulted ceiling and pendulous chandeliers that illuminated swirls of dust motes. They stood in a clearing in the middle of the space. To either side loomed precarious-looking heaps of all kinds of stuff, books and furniture and clothes and paintings and magical contraptions John couldn't begin to identify, like someone's attic on steroids.
"Guess it's bigger on the inside," John quipped. McKay shot him an indiscernible look.
Ronon was moving along one wall with his wand up, like he was checking out the perimeter or something. The kneazle, which had apparently come in too, trotted after him.
Teyla gazed at the piles. "I wonder if this is some kind of lost-treasure archive."
"More like the castle junk heap," said McKay. Then: "Ooh, is that a telescope?" He made a beeline for some stack off to the left.
John wandered in a different direction. Against the wall behind a jumble of chairs he found an antique-looking basin with a hand towel hanging neatly from a rung beside it. He sniffed, expecting mildew, but the water looked clear and the towel smelled as fresh and inviting as if it had just come out of the dryer back home. With a shrug, he washed the post-run tackiness from his face and neck and immediately felt better. After drying off, he took an extra minute to bury his face in the towel and breathe in. It really smelled like home. Like what he remembered his mom smelled like.
He meandered around some more piles until he bumped into Ronon doing his circuit.
"What d'you think?" John asked.
Ronon shrugged. "Looks normal, but you never know in this place." He kept walking.
Case in point: Five minutes later, Ronon's voice carried across the room: "Uh, guys? Where'd the door go?"
They pushed on the stone where the door had been. They felt for seams. Teyla tried Alohomora. When that didn't work, McKay elbowed her aside and tried it himself. Then he tried a Revealing spell. Still nothing.
Normally this would be John's cue to quietly freak out, but that sense of benevolence still hummed just beneath his skin.
The kneazle seemed to agree; it sat calmly licking its paws while Teyla, McKay and Ronon argued over how to find a way out.
"I think it's okay," John piped up. The others turned to look at him. Feeling kind of stupid, he said, "Can you feel it? I think the room likes us."
McKay snorted. "Okay, Hogwarts Whisperer, if it likes us so much, why did it trap us in here?"
"Dunno. Maybe we're supposed to do something before it'll let us out. Like a scavenger hunt."
"Or maybe they'll find our cobweb-covered skeletons in here the next time Peeves decides to make that door reappear on a lark!"
Teyla, who had closed her eyes when John first spoke, now opened them. "I think John is right. I sense no danger here."
McKay sighed. "Great. I'm locked in Britain's largest storage closet with a flyboy, Counselor Troi and Ronon the Barbarian." When he realized what he'd just said, he looked up, and up, at Ronon. "Um."
Ronon shrugged one shoulder. "I know people call me that."
"Well, aren't you worried? You don't look like a guy who enjoys being caged in."
It was true; Ronon didn't look happy. Then again, he never looked happy. "Been in worse situations. Sheppard's right; Hogwarts isn't meant to hurt us."
McKay's mouth twisted like he was about to give in when Ronon went on: "Besides, if he's wrong and we're stuck here for a while, we can always eat you."
McKay spluttered and Ronon laughed. John felt his eyebrows go up; he'd never heard the guy laugh before. Ronon's whole body changed, going looser and lighter. For a moment, he looked his age-their age-instead of ten years older.
"Yes, well, you'll get your chance sooner than you think if we don't get out of here soon," McKay groused. "I'm hypoglycemic, you know. It was almost suppertime when Peeves chased me off. Oh, God, I'm going to pass out and go into a coma. Do I look peaky? You don't have any snacks, do you?"
"I'm sorry, I do not," Teyla said. John shook his head. Ronon reached into a pocket, but at the same moment John heard a soft whuff behind him. When he turned to see, a whole picnic spread had appeared on a blanket in the center of the room.
"Cool," he said, and went over to check it out.
There were two roast chickens, mashed potatoes, a bowl of what looked like creamed spinach, roasted root vegetables, a chocolate cake, and icy jugs of pumpkin juice and something brownish with lemon slices. John took a sniff, then grinned. Iced tea.
Four cushions had also appeared. He took a seat on one of the two that were striped in red and gold. "Come on in, the water's fine!" he said to the others, who were hovering.
He didn't have to tell Ronon twice. The guy dropped onto the other Gryffindor cushion, tore a leg off one of the roasts, sniffed it, considered, and dug in.
"What are you-" said McKay. "You don't know where that's been!"
"'s good," Ronon said around his mouthful.
Teyla, who had settled neatly onto the black and yellow cushion, began spooning food onto her plate. John followed suit.
"Will you join us, Rodney?" Teyla asked, since he was still standing there, looking torn.
"I've got to be careful, I'm allergic to citrus. If I eat a single lemon slice I could swell up and die."
John, like everyone else at school, had gotten an earful about McKay's allergy on the second night of their first year, when treacle tarts with lemon zest had appeared after dinner. Ever since then, any dish with citrus served in the Great Hall blared an alarm if McKay reached for it.
Ronon didn't stop chewing to ask, "First you panic because there's no food, and then you complain when some shows up?"
John still felt that low hum of a comforting feeling, safe, safe, safe. He scanned the spread again. "Besides the tea, I don't think any of this stuff's got citrus."
"Excuse me if I'm not willing to bet my life on your-"
"It's all right," Teyla interrupted before a fight could really get going. "Katie taught me an anti-inflammation spell after I was scratched by a Venomous Tentacula in Herbology. You'll be safe, Rodney. I promise."
At last, McKay lowered his satchel and took a seat on the last cushion, blue and bronze, between John and Ronon.
"Mm," he said a minute later around a forkful of potatoes. "That is good."
John took a sip of his drink and discovered that it wasn't just iced tea, it was sweet tea. For a second, he was thrown back to summer afternoons playing on the front porch in the shade of magnolias and oaks heavy with Spanish moss, when his mom had still been around, when he'd been small enough to need both hands to hold the sweating glass and Dave had still been in diapers.
He blinked back to the present and glanced around to see if anyone had caught him being sentimental, only to find similar expressions on Ronon and Teyla's faces.
"These are tuttleroots," Teyla said, wondering. "I haven't seen or eaten any since I left Athos. My godmother could not have prepared them better."
Ronon pointed with his fork at what John had guessed was spinach until he'd tried it and found it more peppery, in a complex sauce unlike anything he'd encountered before. "This is gradasch."
"A Satedan dish," Teyla guessed.
Ronon nodded slowly. "My great-aunt used to make it just like this." He stared down at his plate.
Teyla put a hand on his arm. Startled, he looked over at her.
"Where I'm from, we thought no one had survived," she said. "I am honored to count you among my schoolmates."
Ronon kept looking at her. John started to feel kind of awkward. He added, "What she said."
The moment passed, and they went back to eating. Teyla asked, "John? Is there something here that reminds you of home as well?"
John lifted his glass. "The finest sweet tea southern Virginia has to offer," he said in his best hometown drawl.
"And you, Rodney?"
McKay shrugged and kept eating. "Tastes like food."
But when they got to the cake, he changed his tune. "Oh," he moaned around the first bite. "Ohhhhh."
John suddenly remembered all over again how attractive he'd found McKay before his personality had presented itself and ruined everything. He shifted on his cushion. For cover, he smirked. "Should we leave you alone with that?"
"Shut up, I'm having a moment," McKay replied. "Unh. This cake."
It was pretty great cake. John looked around at his companions and didn't mind missing dinner in the Great Hall at all.
*
They sat back to rest their full bellies. Something about those dishes must have broken the ice, because they started talking about how they'd ended up at Hogwarts.
Ronon's story John sort of knew. After his town was destroyed for being too progressive, he managed to escape, evading the Dementors for a whole year before the Headmistress found him during her summer travels, lifted the curse on his head, and helped him recover enough to re-enroll in school. Sateda was empty and haunted, and he hadn't wanted to go to Durmstrang.
Teyla's story was less familiar. Her father was an ambassador of some kind-having come late to the Wizarding world, John was still learning about things like political structure-and Teyla expected to follow in his footsteps someday. She said doing a year or two abroad was standard practice for people going into diplomacy.
(John still didn't know where Athos was, but he figured it wouldn't be polite to ask.)
When it was his turn, he chickened out and summarized. "I got a letter from Salem first, but Hogwarts was..." Farther from home. "Cooler." He deflected quickly. "What about you, McKay? Aren't you Canadian?"
As he'd hoped, McKay was more than happy to talk. "I've got dual citizenship. My family decided I should come here because the academics are supposed to be more rigorous. Not that you'd ever know it, with the lady down the hall who literally reads tea leaves."
Ronon snorted. "You're just mad you're failing Transfiguration."
John raised his eyebrows. He'd been under the impression from the classes they shared that McKay was as brilliant as he constantly said he was.
"I am not!" But as quickly as McKay had puffed up, he deflated. "I'm just… used to reliably reproducible science. None of this stuff where following the rules doesn't produce consistent results, you have to add more 'flair' or 'take into account the frog's mood.'" He did the air quotes and everything.
That's when what was left of their dinner spread Disapparated.
*
Since the door still hadn't reappeared, Ronon and Teyla went exploring and McKay cracked open his Arithmancy book. John was curious about what he might find in the depths of the mystery piles-maybe the secret to transforming his wand into a lightsaber, because nobody could convince him there wasn't some way to do it-but first he edged his cushion over.
"You like Star Trek," he ventured.
McKay tilted his chin up as if he were expecting John to give him a hard time about it. "Yeah, so what?"
John shrugged one shoulder. "Hardly anybody else here watches Muggle stuff."
At that, he seemed to soften a little. "You know Doctor Who."
"Yeah. Some."
"Who's your favorite?"
John had never really thought about it. "Eleven?"
"Oh, you would like him."
"Who's yours?"
"Six, obviously."
Obviously. John leaned over to see the textbook. "Whatcha workin' on?"
McKay sniffed. "It's over your head."
John didn't take it personally; McKay talked to everyone like that, and besides, it was easier for John to get the hang of Wizarding life and stay out of trouble by flying below the radar. Now, though, maybe he could use that to his advantage and surprise McKay.
Instead of retorting that the book had literally been over McKay's head an hour ago, he said, "My teachers've always said I've got a knack for math." And magic, apparently. And Quidditch. He always had loved things that go vroom.
"It's an extra credit project, okay. There's a set of runes, and you can make this encrypted locator spell so six of them in a particular order describe the hidden object's position in a given space. Even if an unauthorized seeker figures out which six runes you chose, there's still significant effort required to work through the number of possible combinations-"
"Seven hundred and twenty," John offered helpfully, nodding along.
McKay blinked at him.
John smirked, pleased.
"Yes. Right. Exactly. And if you can build in a sort of magical alarm that trips after too many failed attempts, you can move your object and hide it again or maybe even put a trace back to the would-be thief."
"Cool," John said appreciatively. "Keep going."
"No, that's basically it. I'm working through a couple of stubborn bugs now."
"But you need more than that," John pointed out. "You said 'in a given space.' In the real world, you won't automatically have a way to establish the reference point for the coordinates. You need to define a starting position."
"A seventh symbol," McKay breathed. "You're right." He pulled out a self-inking quill and started scribbling.
John spent a minute watching the way McKay's hair swept down across his forehead into his eyelashes when he leaned over his work, the way his nose in profile curved up at the end, the way his mouth went even more crooked when he worked over a problem.
Then he got up and went to see what the others were doing.
*
Ronon had found an old photo of a guy with slicked-back hair in a leather jacket riding a motorcycle, only the bike was charmed or something so it flew. The guy whooped as he did a barrel roll beneath the bright blue sky.
"Nice," John said. "And here I thought the Hyperdrive broom was the wildest ride you could get in the Wizarding world."
Ronon grunted and sifted through more photos. "One time this witch down the road mixed Exploding Fluid and dragon wing scales in a sort of backpack and went straight up in the air."
"Sweet." John tried to picture the launch. "What did she say it was like?"
"Dunno. She never came down."
Huh. So much for getting better at the Bubble-Head Charm and attempting a suborbital flight himself anytime soon.
Ronon flipped through more pictures, then said, "You like going fast. You're good at Quidditch and stuff."
"Yeah. I mean, thanks, and yeah, I do," said John. "Do you?"
"I don't remember a lot about what I liked. Before."
Oh. Right. "That sucks."
"Yeah." He tossed the pictures back on the pile and looked at John for the first time since he'd wandered over. "I see you out running sometimes. You're pretty good at that too."
"I guess. It helps clear my head." With everything that had happened to him in the last few years since leaving home, getting the hang of this whole magic thing, and trying to fit in, John got lost in his own thoughts pretty easily.
"You could be better," Ronon said, sounding suddenly like John's old P.E. teacher. "If you stood taller, you'd get more air."
If his teacher had said that, John would probably have made a face and slouched more just to piss him off. But Ronon was cool. Kinda scary, but cool. And he knew from running. "Okay. I may have to wait until spring to work on it, though. It's gonna get too dark out soon."
Ronon rubbed the back of his head. If John didn't know better, he would have said it looked like he was shy. "There're paths you can make inside. Down in the dungeons. Some of the sub-levels, too. I run there all the time."
"Don't Filch and his mangy cat yell at you?"
"Nah, it's easy to avoid them." He dropped his hand and his gaze. "You could come too. If you want. Sometime."
John blinked. No one he knew of had ever hung out with Ronon. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great."
Something seemed to brighten in Ronon’s eyes before he started poking around in the pile again.
*
Someone had found a piano on the other side of the room. When test notes and a couple of scales transitioned into a proper classical piece, John followed the sound to its source. He passed a jumble of statues taller than he was and saw McKay at a dusty upright with Teyla standing next to him. The kneazle was weaving between Rodney's legs and the piano bench legs. John stepped back into the shadows and watched.
"That is wonderful," Teyla said after a few minutes.
"I played for a while, but I quit before I came here," McKay said. "My teacher was stupid. He said my style was too 'clinical.' Not enough artistry. I didn't need that kind of advice." He frowned at the keys.
Teyla got a thoughtful look on her face. When the second movement started, slow and soft, she asked, "Rodney, have you considered that you may be having the same problem in Transfiguration?"
"What? No. That's not the same at all."
"All right. If you believe so."
Moments later, McKay gave in, letting his hands still on the keyboard. "What do you mean?"
"Magic, like music, is not solely about precision. It's as much art as science."
McKay's mouth went extra slanty. He looked up at Teyla, then down at the keys, then back again. "I don't know how to do that."
"Part of the skill is in channeling your emotions. You strike me as someone who has many strong emotions to choose from, no?" She gave him a wry smile to take the edge off her words. "Part is learning to trust your intuition and open yourself to less obvious cues around you. And part is simply practicing. That much is like playing an instrument, I think."
McKay tapped his foot on one of the pedals and looked pensive. "I guess. Yes. Yes, it should be doable." He started to play again.
After a while, Teyla said, "You should accompany the choir sometime."
"You think so?"
Teyla smiled.
*
"Hey, McKay," John called. When McKay came huffing over from wherever he'd been, John showed him the page in the giant handwritten spellbook he'd found.
McKay followed John's pointing finger to the outrageously embellished letters. "Protego?"
"It's a Shield spell," John explained, trying not to bounce on the balls of his feet. "The next time Kolya tries Sectumsempra on you when the professors aren't looking, it'll bounce right off."
He tried not to let on how much he liked being able to make McKay's face light up.
*
Some indeterminate amount of time later-it should have been getting close to bedtime, but the buzz of their new discovery left John anything but tired-they had the rudiments of the charm down. McKay's-Rodney's-hair had gone sticky-uppy after the first few tiny Electrify charms, and John still had damp spots on his robes from the time Rodney had thrown Aguamenti at him, but overall they were starting to repel more hexes than not.
"What are you doing?"
They turned to find Teyla and Ronon making bewildered faces at them from the edge of the small clearing John and Rodney had made for practicing. John could have asked them the same thing; Teyla and Ronon had shed their robes and were holding big sticks, and they looked kind of sweaty.
"I jinxed him," John said proudly. Off Teyla's horrified look, he clarified: "It was only Jelly-Legs."
"I barely felt it," Rodney said, grinning. "John found a Shield spell."
Without warning, John pointed his wand and shouted, "Ascendio!"
"Protego!" Rodney replied, whipping his own wand forward. He only rose a few inches off the ground.
"See?" John asked their audience, closing the distance between him and Rodney so he could give him a hand down.
Teyla raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"What are you doing?" John asked.
She showed them.
*
Bruised, battered, embarrassed and energized, John exchanged Reducto spells with Teyla to shrink their wands back to normal size. Then, at her invitation, he and the other guys kicked off their shoes-everyone had already shrugged off their robes except John, who hadn't brought his out to run-and joined Teyla to sit cross-legged on the mats she said matched the ones they used back home to teach the physical wand fighting she was still learning each summer.
When his sore tailbone hit the mat, John thought that if those were Teyla's novice moves, he'd hate to get on her bad side in another couple of years.
At least she'd kicked Ronon around, too. They'd each been able to sweep the other's feet out from under them once. The closest John had come was getting Teyla to dance backward out of his reach. Then he'd hit himself in the shin with his own wand-stick on the follow-through.
"…and then slowly exhale, allowing each breath to cleanse you, restoring your body and spirit," Teyla was saying. John snuck a glance over to Rodney, who rolled his eyes, then to Ronon, who looked kind of into it with his eyes closed and his hands resting limp and open on his knees.
"Feel your mind clearing, open to all that surrounds you."
John closed his eyes again. Mostly he tried not to fall asleep.
"Embrace the silence."
When Ronon let out a snore, they knew it was time to give up.
*
After taking turns in the bathroom that sprung up where only the basin and towel had stood before, they cast Lumos on all four of their wands and lay them in the center of the circle where they'd eaten dinner. The chandeliers, which John now realized had been dimming for a while, finally went out. Rodney knew an Engorgio charm that turned their cushions into sleeping bags.
The kneazle reappeared while they settled down. It padded from sleeping bag to sleeping bag in search of petting. When it got to Ronon, it accepted a rub and then batted at his necklace.
"Oh, no you don't," Ronon warned, his fist already closed around the bone or whatever it was. The kneazle darted out of reach and sought asylum with Rodney.
"What is that, anyway?" John found himself asking.
Ronon took a while to answer, and when he did, his voice was quiet.
"It was my sister's."
Oh. Crap.
"She found it in the rocks one day when we were out walking. We thought it might have come from a Graphorn."
"What was her name?" Teyla asked softly.
"Melena." Ronon lay back and put an arm over his eyes. "She wanted to be a Medi-Witch when she grew up."
"That sucks," John said.
"I'm sorry," Teyla echoed.
They were respectfully quiet for a while. John didn't want to stare at Ronon when he looked like that, so he let his gaze wander over to Rodney, who was propped up on one elbow as he stroked the kneazle. Lazy with exhaustion, John watched his fingers card through the spotted brown fur, surprisingly gentle. Rodney's hair was in his eyes again. The faint light from their wands cast shadows over his long face, especially under his cheekbones and in the little dip of his slightly cleft chin. John found he didn't mind when Rodney looked up to find him watching; earlier, John had yawned and stretched before crawling into his sleeping bag and he'd caught Rodney looking, too.
Eventually, Rodney piped up, "My sister Jeannie'll be here in another couple of years. She's a little brat, but she's really smart. Not as smart as me, of course. But she'll give everyone a run for their money."
"I don't know if Hogwarts is ready for two McKays," John said.
He tried to imagine Dave at Hogwarts and couldn't. He felt that familiar pang of loss in his stomach, although it was getting easier to handle with each passing year.
"Do you have any siblings, John?" Teyla asked.
"Just my kid brother. I don't think he'll be coming here."
He let that sit for a minute, then admitted, "My dad didn't want me to go to Wizarding school. He tore up all the invitations that came to our house the summer I turned eleven. I didn't find out about any of it until the letters started coming straight to me at sleepaway camp instead."
"Why would your father want to keep you away?" Teyla wondered.
John shrugged automatically, but he knew why, and suddenly, keeping it all a secret from his new friends didn't seem necessary.
"I don't think he likes having a wizard for a son," he said. "I mean, he's a Muggle, and I think Dave is too. We all knew something was... different... about me, but I didn't even know magic was real until I read that letter."
Rodney's eyes were wide. "So you're a Mudbl-" Teyla kicked him through their sleeping bags.
John gave him a wry smile. "Half-blood, maybe. I think my mom might have been a witch."
"What about you?" he asked Teyla.
She shook her head. Her face, like Rodney's, and like Ronon's, too, now that he'd come out from under his arm, was beautifully defined in the wandlight.
"I am an only child, but in our village, our cousins and neighbors are like our own families. I wouldn't trade Hogwarts for anything, but I miss them terribly," she confessed.
Softly, Teyla went on to describe some of the expectations her family placed on her as she prepared to become a leader, and how as this exchange year went on she was feeling the pressure more than ever. John thought he knew exactly what she meant, growing up under the shadow of his father's company, but it was Rodney who chimed in with a couple of stress management techniques his harried parents had tried to teach him.
John's eyes gradually closed as he listened.
He couldn't have said when they slipped from conversation into sleep.
*
He woke to chandelier light and the sound of a rustling sleeping bag. He sat up, dislodging the kneazle from his chest with a soft yowl, and found Teyla doing some of the stretches she'd shown them the night before. Ronon's sleeping bag was empty; John heard the faint sounds of water running. Rodney lay dead to the world on his back with his mouth wide open and his sleeping bag twisted around him.
John's whole body ached from running, getting beaten up by Teyla and sleeping on the stone floor, but overall, there were worse ways to start a day.
It wasn't until they had all washed up and put their shoes and things back on that they noticed the kneazle was scratching at the door to go out.
"Guess that means we pass the test," John said.
None of them rushed to open it.
As they stood around shuffling their feet, Teyla said, "A moment, please." She reached out and took Rodney's hand, then Ronon's, and nodded for them to take John's so they stood in a loose circle. He felt a little silly, but also a little glad for the human contact. Even if Rodney's palm was kind of clammy.
"We didn't know one another well before yesterday, and most of us are in different houses," she said. "However, I would very much like to be friends."
For the first time since the high of discovering magic had begun to level out, John thought that empty spot inside him felt a little smaller. "Me too," he said.
Ronon didn't say anything, but he squeezed John's hand tighter for a second.
Later, John would return to this room with Teyla to practice wand-stick fighting. (It did feel kind of like having a lightsaber duel, once he learned enough not to lose his grip every time she smacked him.) He knew Ronon and Teyla did the same on their own schedule. Sometimes he'd walk by and hear Rodney practicing piano. Twice, John spotted one of the Slytherins giving Rodney a hard time; the first time, Ronon appeared over Rodney's shoulder and glared at them until they backed off, and the second, Rodney used his Shield charm so the jinx rebounded onto the caster. After that, he never saw them bother Rodney again. John also started running with Ronon and getting invited to movie nights in the Ravenclaw common room, where Rodney and his friend Radek had transfigured and charmed and otherwise jerry-rigged a projector that could display Muggle DVDs as easily as Wizarding movies.
And once a month, if the stars aligned, all four of them met for another evening picnic.
For now, Teyla made them all touch their foreheads together like the Wizarding world's equivalent of a group hug. Then they filed out into the corridor.
They headed for the Great Hall for breakfast, chatting as they went. The portraits nudged one another and positively beamed at them as they passed.
Behind them, the door disappeared as mysteriously as it had come and gone the evening before.
As always, comments and concrit are welcome.
Commentary on the remixing process here.
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Harry Potter fusion
Characters: John, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 6,733
Summary: Four students have been feeling out of place. Hogwarts gives them a nudge.
Content notes: None, I don't think.
A/N: Many, many thanks to synn for helping me through the writing process. A few lines are taken from the show. Please forgive me for playing fast and loose with timelines and the HP universe.
Read at the AO3 or below.
John sighed as he trudged up the last set of stairs on the way back to the Gryffindor common room after his regular Friday afternoon run. The days were growing chilly and short; soon he would have to forego his after-class loop through the Hogwarts grounds. He wondered if he could blame his mood on the change of seasons, or maybe even on his aching thighs and cold nose. But he'd been feeling kind of down for longer than that.
The bone-deep sound of grinding stone interrupted his thoughts. With the reflexes every Hogwarts student learned in their first month, John braced himself just as the staircase shuddered and swung away from the wall.
"Dammit," he said to nobody in particular. "I was almost there."
From somewhere above his line of sight, the Fat Lady tsked at him. "Language, young man!"
Shoulders drooping, he called back, "Sorry, ma'am."
He held on as the staircase retracted several flights down the tower and took him on a joy ride across one of the atriums that served as a transit hub. "Wrong way, Shep!" Mitch and Holland called from a staircase going the other direction; John flipped them the bird and waited for them to fly out of sight before he let his smirk fade. Those guys were fun enough for a Hogsmeade trip or a common room party, just as Lorne and Bates and the other guys from Quidditch were cool on the field, but he couldn't shake the sense that something was missing.
Finally, the stairs deposited him across the castle. Visions of a hot shower retreated as he stepped into the hallway and realized how far out of the way he'd come. Well, at least he was on the seventh floor again. Probably. Maybe. Hm.
Halfway down the corridor, he paused, not sure he was going the right way. He doubled back, then paused a second time. No; he was pretty sure the first way had been right. He started walking again. Only... had that door been there a second ago? Weird. He remembered passing the tapestry with the flailing trolls on the opposite wall, but not the door, unremarkable as it was.
He was about to shrug it off when he heard footsteps. He turned to find a pretty girl in Hufflepuff robes coming down the hall where he'd been headed.
"Oh," she said when she saw him. "Hello. Have you been following the portraits too?"
She had a nice smile and amazing cheekbones. John thought his ears might be going red. "The...?"
"It was very strange. I was leaving choir practice when the wizards who play cards in the oil painting outside the Great Hall whispered at me and gestured toward the stairs. At the top, the Lady of Shalott pointed me down the corridor. Someone has been waiting for me at every junction, until I found myself here. Did that not also happen to you?"
John shook his head. "I just got sidetracked by some moving stairs."
"I see."
She looked at him. He looked at her.
"Well, I suppose I'll keep going, then," she said. He was about to wave goodbye when she added, "Would you like to join me?"
"Uh. Sure."
She held out her hand. "I am Teyla Emmagan."
Oh-she was that exchange student people talked about sometimes. Cool.
He shook. "I'm John. John Sheppard."
"Yes. I know." She gave him another nice smile and started walking.
His ears got even warmer as he followed. "You do?"
"My friends Amelia, Sora and Larrin are on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. I've seen you play."
John had a crystal clear memory of Larrin smacking a bludger right at his face last season. It was the closest anyone outside Slytherin had come to knocking him off his broom. He'd had a shiner that not even Madame Pomfrey could fully bring down.
"You are very good," Teyla was saying. John ducked his head.
They hadn't gone far when a suit of armor John had passed earlier held up a hand to halt them. The creak of ancient, unoiled metal startled him almost as much as seeing the suit move in the first place. He'd only heard rumors about that. Like that they walked around at night when no one was watching, and fought duels over summer hols that rang through the empty halls.
Teyla didn't seem scared, though, so he just went with it.
"Have we come too far?" she asked the suit. "Or should I not have brought John?"
With a series of nails-on-chalkboard scrapes, the suit pointed slowly at Teyla, then at John, and then back the way they had just come.
Teyla's brow furrowed. "Are you sure?"
The suit didn't move.
"'Curiouser and curiouser,'" Teyla said as they about-faced. "I read that in an English Muggle book when I moved here. Do you like Lewis Carroll?"
Normally he'd just shrug, but something about Teyla made him want to tell the truth. "My fifth-grade teacher read us 'Jabberwocky' before I switched to Wizarding school. It sort of made my brain hurt," he admitted. "I like the Disney movie, though."
They stopped in front of the mysterious door again. "This appears to be the only object of interest between the armor and the last portrait I passed," Teyla mused.
"Other than Barnabas the Barmy," John pointed out, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the tapestry where Barnabas was still trying to make the trolls do squats or pliés or whatever. "Maybe that makes us Alice, about to open the door to wonderland." Seemed kind of redundant, though, given that he'd already gone through the looking glass coming to Hogwarts in the first place.
He made a face, considering the doorknob. It seemed innocuous enough, but then, so had his Transfiguration exam before the stupid beetle had jumped up and latched onto his neck.
Pounding footsteps echoed from the end of the hall Teyla had originally come from. A moment later, a small four-legged animal rounded the corner at full speed, followed by a large guy brandishing his wand. As they got closer, the animal resolved into a kneazle and the guy into Ronon Dex. Something glinted in the kneazle's mouth.
"Would that be the white rabbit, then?" Teyla asked.
This day was starting to feel strange enough that John didn't think he would do a double-take if the kneazle took out a pocket watch and exclaimed that it was late. But all it did was dart up to them... and stop. It turned to look at its pursuer and-pointedly, John would have sworn-dropped what looked like a necklace to the stone floor.
Ronon Dex slowed to a trot and came to a stop by them as well. He was tall and fit and more buff than John could ever hope to be, but he was breathing kind of hard.
"Stupid cat," he said in the low, deep voice that was the envy of half the guys in Gryffindor whose own voices hadn't broken yet. He dropped to a crouch and scooped up the necklace. "Dodged all my Stupefies. Had to chase it all the way from the archery field."
That might have been the most words John had heard him speak in a row since Ronon had shown up at Hogwarts a month into the school year.
"I believe it is a kneazle," Teyla said, crouching to scritch it behind the ears. The kneazle purred and butted up into her hand.
"Whatever." Ronon stood and tied the necklace back on. John had heard that the bone on the end of that cord had come from the skull of a Dementor that Ronon had killed with his bare hands, after it and the others had destroyed Ronon's whole village. He'd also heard it was a piece of one of the neo-Death Eaters who'd sent the Dementors in the first place.
Ronon nodded at the wall. "What's in there?"
"That's what we were just trying to figure out."
"Could've sworn it wasn't there ten minutes ago," John said.
Ronon made a face. "This castle is weird."
As if on cue, voices floated up from the stairwell beyond the suit of armor. Soon they became distinct enough for John to make out the words.
"Stop harassing me, you cretin!" a boy shouted.
Someone laughed, and then the same boy said, "Hey! Stop that! Give that back!"
John recognized that voice; it belonged to the smartest but most annoying guy in Ravenclaw. Sure enough, here came the lanky form of Rodney "Don't Call Me Meredith" McKay, clutching the strap of his usual overstuffed satchel with one hand and trying to protect his head with the other.
John had figured Kolya or Todd or one of the other Slytherin bullies was bothering him again, but the culprit turned out to be none other than Peeves the poltergeist.
"Ow!" McKay protested as Peeves whapped him upside the head with what looked like a textbook. "I need my brain for thinking!"
Peeves cackled and drove him onward.
"Help," McKay cried when he spotted John and the others. "He's been hounding me ever since I tried to go into the Astronomy Tower, and-ow!-now he's got my Advanced Arithmancy book."
"Merry merry Meredith," sang Peeves. The kneazle hissed at him as he soared nearer. "No stargazing for you tonight, oh no."
McKay got close enough to duck behind Ronon, who was a good head taller. Ronon raised his eyebrows and looked back over his shoulder at him, but didn't otherwise seem perturbed.
Anyway, McKay didn't have to worry; Peeves dropped his loot without ceremony and clapped instead. "Oh goody, you're all here! Now the fun can begin."
The four of them exchanged looks. "What do you mean, 'all'?" asked Teyla.
"I don't have time to waste on your infantile pranks," said McKay. "Radek's waiting for me."
Peeves dove for the textbook and Rodney darted behind Ronon again like a turtle jerking its head back into its shell. John snatched up the book before anyone else could start battering someone with it. He got enough Beating at Quidditch practice, thank you very much. He handed it to McKay, who scowled as he dusted it off.
"Okay, okay."
John braced himself for whatever else Peeves had in mind, but the ghost only did a midair somersault and then floated away, still cackling.
John took out his wand. "Guess we should see what's in there."
The others got out their wands too and gathered behind him.
John stepped up and tentatively laid his left palm on the wood. Sometimes... It was hard to describe, but sometimes he could feel Hogwarts. As if the magic thrumming through its walls could communicate with something deep down in his cells. This door felt... benevolent. Like standing on the stoop of his grandma's house.
He turned the knob and went in.
*
It was a huge room, with a vaulted ceiling and pendulous chandeliers that illuminated swirls of dust motes. They stood in a clearing in the middle of the space. To either side loomed precarious-looking heaps of all kinds of stuff, books and furniture and clothes and paintings and magical contraptions John couldn't begin to identify, like someone's attic on steroids.
"Guess it's bigger on the inside," John quipped. McKay shot him an indiscernible look.
Ronon was moving along one wall with his wand up, like he was checking out the perimeter or something. The kneazle, which had apparently come in too, trotted after him.
Teyla gazed at the piles. "I wonder if this is some kind of lost-treasure archive."
"More like the castle junk heap," said McKay. Then: "Ooh, is that a telescope?" He made a beeline for some stack off to the left.
John wandered in a different direction. Against the wall behind a jumble of chairs he found an antique-looking basin with a hand towel hanging neatly from a rung beside it. He sniffed, expecting mildew, but the water looked clear and the towel smelled as fresh and inviting as if it had just come out of the dryer back home. With a shrug, he washed the post-run tackiness from his face and neck and immediately felt better. After drying off, he took an extra minute to bury his face in the towel and breathe in. It really smelled like home. Like what he remembered his mom smelled like.
He meandered around some more piles until he bumped into Ronon doing his circuit.
"What d'you think?" John asked.
Ronon shrugged. "Looks normal, but you never know in this place." He kept walking.
Case in point: Five minutes later, Ronon's voice carried across the room: "Uh, guys? Where'd the door go?"
They pushed on the stone where the door had been. They felt for seams. Teyla tried Alohomora. When that didn't work, McKay elbowed her aside and tried it himself. Then he tried a Revealing spell. Still nothing.
Normally this would be John's cue to quietly freak out, but that sense of benevolence still hummed just beneath his skin.
The kneazle seemed to agree; it sat calmly licking its paws while Teyla, McKay and Ronon argued over how to find a way out.
"I think it's okay," John piped up. The others turned to look at him. Feeling kind of stupid, he said, "Can you feel it? I think the room likes us."
McKay snorted. "Okay, Hogwarts Whisperer, if it likes us so much, why did it trap us in here?"
"Dunno. Maybe we're supposed to do something before it'll let us out. Like a scavenger hunt."
"Or maybe they'll find our cobweb-covered skeletons in here the next time Peeves decides to make that door reappear on a lark!"
Teyla, who had closed her eyes when John first spoke, now opened them. "I think John is right. I sense no danger here."
McKay sighed. "Great. I'm locked in Britain's largest storage closet with a flyboy, Counselor Troi and Ronon the Barbarian." When he realized what he'd just said, he looked up, and up, at Ronon. "Um."
Ronon shrugged one shoulder. "I know people call me that."
"Well, aren't you worried? You don't look like a guy who enjoys being caged in."
It was true; Ronon didn't look happy. Then again, he never looked happy. "Been in worse situations. Sheppard's right; Hogwarts isn't meant to hurt us."
McKay's mouth twisted like he was about to give in when Ronon went on: "Besides, if he's wrong and we're stuck here for a while, we can always eat you."
McKay spluttered and Ronon laughed. John felt his eyebrows go up; he'd never heard the guy laugh before. Ronon's whole body changed, going looser and lighter. For a moment, he looked his age-their age-instead of ten years older.
"Yes, well, you'll get your chance sooner than you think if we don't get out of here soon," McKay groused. "I'm hypoglycemic, you know. It was almost suppertime when Peeves chased me off. Oh, God, I'm going to pass out and go into a coma. Do I look peaky? You don't have any snacks, do you?"
"I'm sorry, I do not," Teyla said. John shook his head. Ronon reached into a pocket, but at the same moment John heard a soft whuff behind him. When he turned to see, a whole picnic spread had appeared on a blanket in the center of the room.
"Cool," he said, and went over to check it out.
There were two roast chickens, mashed potatoes, a bowl of what looked like creamed spinach, roasted root vegetables, a chocolate cake, and icy jugs of pumpkin juice and something brownish with lemon slices. John took a sniff, then grinned. Iced tea.
Four cushions had also appeared. He took a seat on one of the two that were striped in red and gold. "Come on in, the water's fine!" he said to the others, who were hovering.
He didn't have to tell Ronon twice. The guy dropped onto the other Gryffindor cushion, tore a leg off one of the roasts, sniffed it, considered, and dug in.
"What are you-" said McKay. "You don't know where that's been!"
"'s good," Ronon said around his mouthful.
Teyla, who had settled neatly onto the black and yellow cushion, began spooning food onto her plate. John followed suit.
"Will you join us, Rodney?" Teyla asked, since he was still standing there, looking torn.
"I've got to be careful, I'm allergic to citrus. If I eat a single lemon slice I could swell up and die."
John, like everyone else at school, had gotten an earful about McKay's allergy on the second night of their first year, when treacle tarts with lemon zest had appeared after dinner. Ever since then, any dish with citrus served in the Great Hall blared an alarm if McKay reached for it.
Ronon didn't stop chewing to ask, "First you panic because there's no food, and then you complain when some shows up?"
John still felt that low hum of a comforting feeling, safe, safe, safe. He scanned the spread again. "Besides the tea, I don't think any of this stuff's got citrus."
"Excuse me if I'm not willing to bet my life on your-"
"It's all right," Teyla interrupted before a fight could really get going. "Katie taught me an anti-inflammation spell after I was scratched by a Venomous Tentacula in Herbology. You'll be safe, Rodney. I promise."
At last, McKay lowered his satchel and took a seat on the last cushion, blue and bronze, between John and Ronon.
"Mm," he said a minute later around a forkful of potatoes. "That is good."
John took a sip of his drink and discovered that it wasn't just iced tea, it was sweet tea. For a second, he was thrown back to summer afternoons playing on the front porch in the shade of magnolias and oaks heavy with Spanish moss, when his mom had still been around, when he'd been small enough to need both hands to hold the sweating glass and Dave had still been in diapers.
He blinked back to the present and glanced around to see if anyone had caught him being sentimental, only to find similar expressions on Ronon and Teyla's faces.
"These are tuttleroots," Teyla said, wondering. "I haven't seen or eaten any since I left Athos. My godmother could not have prepared them better."
Ronon pointed with his fork at what John had guessed was spinach until he'd tried it and found it more peppery, in a complex sauce unlike anything he'd encountered before. "This is gradasch."
"A Satedan dish," Teyla guessed.
Ronon nodded slowly. "My great-aunt used to make it just like this." He stared down at his plate.
Teyla put a hand on his arm. Startled, he looked over at her.
"Where I'm from, we thought no one had survived," she said. "I am honored to count you among my schoolmates."
Ronon kept looking at her. John started to feel kind of awkward. He added, "What she said."
The moment passed, and they went back to eating. Teyla asked, "John? Is there something here that reminds you of home as well?"
John lifted his glass. "The finest sweet tea southern Virginia has to offer," he said in his best hometown drawl.
"And you, Rodney?"
McKay shrugged and kept eating. "Tastes like food."
But when they got to the cake, he changed his tune. "Oh," he moaned around the first bite. "Ohhhhh."
John suddenly remembered all over again how attractive he'd found McKay before his personality had presented itself and ruined everything. He shifted on his cushion. For cover, he smirked. "Should we leave you alone with that?"
"Shut up, I'm having a moment," McKay replied. "Unh. This cake."
It was pretty great cake. John looked around at his companions and didn't mind missing dinner in the Great Hall at all.
*
They sat back to rest their full bellies. Something about those dishes must have broken the ice, because they started talking about how they'd ended up at Hogwarts.
Ronon's story John sort of knew. After his town was destroyed for being too progressive, he managed to escape, evading the Dementors for a whole year before the Headmistress found him during her summer travels, lifted the curse on his head, and helped him recover enough to re-enroll in school. Sateda was empty and haunted, and he hadn't wanted to go to Durmstrang.
Teyla's story was less familiar. Her father was an ambassador of some kind-having come late to the Wizarding world, John was still learning about things like political structure-and Teyla expected to follow in his footsteps someday. She said doing a year or two abroad was standard practice for people going into diplomacy.
(John still didn't know where Athos was, but he figured it wouldn't be polite to ask.)
When it was his turn, he chickened out and summarized. "I got a letter from Salem first, but Hogwarts was..." Farther from home. "Cooler." He deflected quickly. "What about you, McKay? Aren't you Canadian?"
As he'd hoped, McKay was more than happy to talk. "I've got dual citizenship. My family decided I should come here because the academics are supposed to be more rigorous. Not that you'd ever know it, with the lady down the hall who literally reads tea leaves."
Ronon snorted. "You're just mad you're failing Transfiguration."
John raised his eyebrows. He'd been under the impression from the classes they shared that McKay was as brilliant as he constantly said he was.
"I am not!" But as quickly as McKay had puffed up, he deflated. "I'm just… used to reliably reproducible science. None of this stuff where following the rules doesn't produce consistent results, you have to add more 'flair' or 'take into account the frog's mood.'" He did the air quotes and everything.
That's when what was left of their dinner spread Disapparated.
*
Since the door still hadn't reappeared, Ronon and Teyla went exploring and McKay cracked open his Arithmancy book. John was curious about what he might find in the depths of the mystery piles-maybe the secret to transforming his wand into a lightsaber, because nobody could convince him there wasn't some way to do it-but first he edged his cushion over.
"You like Star Trek," he ventured.
McKay tilted his chin up as if he were expecting John to give him a hard time about it. "Yeah, so what?"
John shrugged one shoulder. "Hardly anybody else here watches Muggle stuff."
At that, he seemed to soften a little. "You know Doctor Who."
"Yeah. Some."
"Who's your favorite?"
John had never really thought about it. "Eleven?"
"Oh, you would like him."
"Who's yours?"
"Six, obviously."
Obviously. John leaned over to see the textbook. "Whatcha workin' on?"
McKay sniffed. "It's over your head."
John didn't take it personally; McKay talked to everyone like that, and besides, it was easier for John to get the hang of Wizarding life and stay out of trouble by flying below the radar. Now, though, maybe he could use that to his advantage and surprise McKay.
Instead of retorting that the book had literally been over McKay's head an hour ago, he said, "My teachers've always said I've got a knack for math." And magic, apparently. And Quidditch. He always had loved things that go vroom.
"It's an extra credit project, okay. There's a set of runes, and you can make this encrypted locator spell so six of them in a particular order describe the hidden object's position in a given space. Even if an unauthorized seeker figures out which six runes you chose, there's still significant effort required to work through the number of possible combinations-"
"Seven hundred and twenty," John offered helpfully, nodding along.
McKay blinked at him.
John smirked, pleased.
"Yes. Right. Exactly. And if you can build in a sort of magical alarm that trips after too many failed attempts, you can move your object and hide it again or maybe even put a trace back to the would-be thief."
"Cool," John said appreciatively. "Keep going."
"No, that's basically it. I'm working through a couple of stubborn bugs now."
"But you need more than that," John pointed out. "You said 'in a given space.' In the real world, you won't automatically have a way to establish the reference point for the coordinates. You need to define a starting position."
"A seventh symbol," McKay breathed. "You're right." He pulled out a self-inking quill and started scribbling.
John spent a minute watching the way McKay's hair swept down across his forehead into his eyelashes when he leaned over his work, the way his nose in profile curved up at the end, the way his mouth went even more crooked when he worked over a problem.
Then he got up and went to see what the others were doing.
*
Ronon had found an old photo of a guy with slicked-back hair in a leather jacket riding a motorcycle, only the bike was charmed or something so it flew. The guy whooped as he did a barrel roll beneath the bright blue sky.
"Nice," John said. "And here I thought the Hyperdrive broom was the wildest ride you could get in the Wizarding world."
Ronon grunted and sifted through more photos. "One time this witch down the road mixed Exploding Fluid and dragon wing scales in a sort of backpack and went straight up in the air."
"Sweet." John tried to picture the launch. "What did she say it was like?"
"Dunno. She never came down."
Huh. So much for getting better at the Bubble-Head Charm and attempting a suborbital flight himself anytime soon.
Ronon flipped through more pictures, then said, "You like going fast. You're good at Quidditch and stuff."
"Yeah. I mean, thanks, and yeah, I do," said John. "Do you?"
"I don't remember a lot about what I liked. Before."
Oh. Right. "That sucks."
"Yeah." He tossed the pictures back on the pile and looked at John for the first time since he'd wandered over. "I see you out running sometimes. You're pretty good at that too."
"I guess. It helps clear my head." With everything that had happened to him in the last few years since leaving home, getting the hang of this whole magic thing, and trying to fit in, John got lost in his own thoughts pretty easily.
"You could be better," Ronon said, sounding suddenly like John's old P.E. teacher. "If you stood taller, you'd get more air."
If his teacher had said that, John would probably have made a face and slouched more just to piss him off. But Ronon was cool. Kinda scary, but cool. And he knew from running. "Okay. I may have to wait until spring to work on it, though. It's gonna get too dark out soon."
Ronon rubbed the back of his head. If John didn't know better, he would have said it looked like he was shy. "There're paths you can make inside. Down in the dungeons. Some of the sub-levels, too. I run there all the time."
"Don't Filch and his mangy cat yell at you?"
"Nah, it's easy to avoid them." He dropped his hand and his gaze. "You could come too. If you want. Sometime."
John blinked. No one he knew of had ever hung out with Ronon. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great."
Something seemed to brighten in Ronon’s eyes before he started poking around in the pile again.
*
Someone had found a piano on the other side of the room. When test notes and a couple of scales transitioned into a proper classical piece, John followed the sound to its source. He passed a jumble of statues taller than he was and saw McKay at a dusty upright with Teyla standing next to him. The kneazle was weaving between Rodney's legs and the piano bench legs. John stepped back into the shadows and watched.
"That is wonderful," Teyla said after a few minutes.
"I played for a while, but I quit before I came here," McKay said. "My teacher was stupid. He said my style was too 'clinical.' Not enough artistry. I didn't need that kind of advice." He frowned at the keys.
Teyla got a thoughtful look on her face. When the second movement started, slow and soft, she asked, "Rodney, have you considered that you may be having the same problem in Transfiguration?"
"What? No. That's not the same at all."
"All right. If you believe so."
Moments later, McKay gave in, letting his hands still on the keyboard. "What do you mean?"
"Magic, like music, is not solely about precision. It's as much art as science."
McKay's mouth went extra slanty. He looked up at Teyla, then down at the keys, then back again. "I don't know how to do that."
"Part of the skill is in channeling your emotions. You strike me as someone who has many strong emotions to choose from, no?" She gave him a wry smile to take the edge off her words. "Part is learning to trust your intuition and open yourself to less obvious cues around you. And part is simply practicing. That much is like playing an instrument, I think."
McKay tapped his foot on one of the pedals and looked pensive. "I guess. Yes. Yes, it should be doable." He started to play again.
After a while, Teyla said, "You should accompany the choir sometime."
"You think so?"
Teyla smiled.
*
"Hey, McKay," John called. When McKay came huffing over from wherever he'd been, John showed him the page in the giant handwritten spellbook he'd found.
McKay followed John's pointing finger to the outrageously embellished letters. "Protego?"
"It's a Shield spell," John explained, trying not to bounce on the balls of his feet. "The next time Kolya tries Sectumsempra on you when the professors aren't looking, it'll bounce right off."
He tried not to let on how much he liked being able to make McKay's face light up.
*
Some indeterminate amount of time later-it should have been getting close to bedtime, but the buzz of their new discovery left John anything but tired-they had the rudiments of the charm down. McKay's-Rodney's-hair had gone sticky-uppy after the first few tiny Electrify charms, and John still had damp spots on his robes from the time Rodney had thrown Aguamenti at him, but overall they were starting to repel more hexes than not.
"What are you doing?"
They turned to find Teyla and Ronon making bewildered faces at them from the edge of the small clearing John and Rodney had made for practicing. John could have asked them the same thing; Teyla and Ronon had shed their robes and were holding big sticks, and they looked kind of sweaty.
"I jinxed him," John said proudly. Off Teyla's horrified look, he clarified: "It was only Jelly-Legs."
"I barely felt it," Rodney said, grinning. "John found a Shield spell."
Without warning, John pointed his wand and shouted, "Ascendio!"
"Protego!" Rodney replied, whipping his own wand forward. He only rose a few inches off the ground.
"See?" John asked their audience, closing the distance between him and Rodney so he could give him a hand down.
Teyla raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"What are you doing?" John asked.
She showed them.
*
Bruised, battered, embarrassed and energized, John exchanged Reducto spells with Teyla to shrink their wands back to normal size. Then, at her invitation, he and the other guys kicked off their shoes-everyone had already shrugged off their robes except John, who hadn't brought his out to run-and joined Teyla to sit cross-legged on the mats she said matched the ones they used back home to teach the physical wand fighting she was still learning each summer.
When his sore tailbone hit the mat, John thought that if those were Teyla's novice moves, he'd hate to get on her bad side in another couple of years.
At least she'd kicked Ronon around, too. They'd each been able to sweep the other's feet out from under them once. The closest John had come was getting Teyla to dance backward out of his reach. Then he'd hit himself in the shin with his own wand-stick on the follow-through.
"…and then slowly exhale, allowing each breath to cleanse you, restoring your body and spirit," Teyla was saying. John snuck a glance over to Rodney, who rolled his eyes, then to Ronon, who looked kind of into it with his eyes closed and his hands resting limp and open on his knees.
"Feel your mind clearing, open to all that surrounds you."
John closed his eyes again. Mostly he tried not to fall asleep.
"Embrace the silence."
When Ronon let out a snore, they knew it was time to give up.
*
After taking turns in the bathroom that sprung up where only the basin and towel had stood before, they cast Lumos on all four of their wands and lay them in the center of the circle where they'd eaten dinner. The chandeliers, which John now realized had been dimming for a while, finally went out. Rodney knew an Engorgio charm that turned their cushions into sleeping bags.
The kneazle reappeared while they settled down. It padded from sleeping bag to sleeping bag in search of petting. When it got to Ronon, it accepted a rub and then batted at his necklace.
"Oh, no you don't," Ronon warned, his fist already closed around the bone or whatever it was. The kneazle darted out of reach and sought asylum with Rodney.
"What is that, anyway?" John found himself asking.
Ronon took a while to answer, and when he did, his voice was quiet.
"It was my sister's."
Oh. Crap.
"She found it in the rocks one day when we were out walking. We thought it might have come from a Graphorn."
"What was her name?" Teyla asked softly.
"Melena." Ronon lay back and put an arm over his eyes. "She wanted to be a Medi-Witch when she grew up."
"That sucks," John said.
"I'm sorry," Teyla echoed.
They were respectfully quiet for a while. John didn't want to stare at Ronon when he looked like that, so he let his gaze wander over to Rodney, who was propped up on one elbow as he stroked the kneazle. Lazy with exhaustion, John watched his fingers card through the spotted brown fur, surprisingly gentle. Rodney's hair was in his eyes again. The faint light from their wands cast shadows over his long face, especially under his cheekbones and in the little dip of his slightly cleft chin. John found he didn't mind when Rodney looked up to find him watching; earlier, John had yawned and stretched before crawling into his sleeping bag and he'd caught Rodney looking, too.
Eventually, Rodney piped up, "My sister Jeannie'll be here in another couple of years. She's a little brat, but she's really smart. Not as smart as me, of course. But she'll give everyone a run for their money."
"I don't know if Hogwarts is ready for two McKays," John said.
He tried to imagine Dave at Hogwarts and couldn't. He felt that familiar pang of loss in his stomach, although it was getting easier to handle with each passing year.
"Do you have any siblings, John?" Teyla asked.
"Just my kid brother. I don't think he'll be coming here."
He let that sit for a minute, then admitted, "My dad didn't want me to go to Wizarding school. He tore up all the invitations that came to our house the summer I turned eleven. I didn't find out about any of it until the letters started coming straight to me at sleepaway camp instead."
"Why would your father want to keep you away?" Teyla wondered.
John shrugged automatically, but he knew why, and suddenly, keeping it all a secret from his new friends didn't seem necessary.
"I don't think he likes having a wizard for a son," he said. "I mean, he's a Muggle, and I think Dave is too. We all knew something was... different... about me, but I didn't even know magic was real until I read that letter."
Rodney's eyes were wide. "So you're a Mudbl-" Teyla kicked him through their sleeping bags.
John gave him a wry smile. "Half-blood, maybe. I think my mom might have been a witch."
"What about you?" he asked Teyla.
She shook her head. Her face, like Rodney's, and like Ronon's, too, now that he'd come out from under his arm, was beautifully defined in the wandlight.
"I am an only child, but in our village, our cousins and neighbors are like our own families. I wouldn't trade Hogwarts for anything, but I miss them terribly," she confessed.
Softly, Teyla went on to describe some of the expectations her family placed on her as she prepared to become a leader, and how as this exchange year went on she was feeling the pressure more than ever. John thought he knew exactly what she meant, growing up under the shadow of his father's company, but it was Rodney who chimed in with a couple of stress management techniques his harried parents had tried to teach him.
John's eyes gradually closed as he listened.
He couldn't have said when they slipped from conversation into sleep.
*
He woke to chandelier light and the sound of a rustling sleeping bag. He sat up, dislodging the kneazle from his chest with a soft yowl, and found Teyla doing some of the stretches she'd shown them the night before. Ronon's sleeping bag was empty; John heard the faint sounds of water running. Rodney lay dead to the world on his back with his mouth wide open and his sleeping bag twisted around him.
John's whole body ached from running, getting beaten up by Teyla and sleeping on the stone floor, but overall, there were worse ways to start a day.
It wasn't until they had all washed up and put their shoes and things back on that they noticed the kneazle was scratching at the door to go out.
"Guess that means we pass the test," John said.
None of them rushed to open it.
As they stood around shuffling their feet, Teyla said, "A moment, please." She reached out and took Rodney's hand, then Ronon's, and nodded for them to take John's so they stood in a loose circle. He felt a little silly, but also a little glad for the human contact. Even if Rodney's palm was kind of clammy.
"We didn't know one another well before yesterday, and most of us are in different houses," she said. "However, I would very much like to be friends."
For the first time since the high of discovering magic had begun to level out, John thought that empty spot inside him felt a little smaller. "Me too," he said.
Ronon didn't say anything, but he squeezed John's hand tighter for a second.
Later, John would return to this room with Teyla to practice wand-stick fighting. (It did feel kind of like having a lightsaber duel, once he learned enough not to lose his grip every time she smacked him.) He knew Ronon and Teyla did the same on their own schedule. Sometimes he'd walk by and hear Rodney practicing piano. Twice, John spotted one of the Slytherins giving Rodney a hard time; the first time, Ronon appeared over Rodney's shoulder and glared at them until they backed off, and the second, Rodney used his Shield charm so the jinx rebounded onto the caster. After that, he never saw them bother Rodney again. John also started running with Ronon and getting invited to movie nights in the Ravenclaw common room, where Rodney and his friend Radek had transfigured and charmed and otherwise jerry-rigged a projector that could display Muggle DVDs as easily as Wizarding movies.
And once a month, if the stars aligned, all four of them met for another evening picnic.
For now, Teyla made them all touch their foreheads together like the Wizarding world's equivalent of a group hug. Then they filed out into the corridor.
They headed for the Great Hall for breakfast, chatting as they went. The portraits nudged one another and positively beamed at them as they passed.
Behind them, the door disappeared as mysteriously as it had come and gone the evening before.
As always, comments and concrit are welcome.
Commentary on the remixing process here.