Title: The Lazarus Curse (And Other Reasons Why the Good Can Never Die Young) PART III
Author: Gaia
Rating: R
Pairings: McShep, Lupin/Tonks, Ron/Hermione, maybe some Harry/Draco preslash, if you squint
Genre: xover with Harry Potter, drama, humor, AU
Disclaimer: Don’t own SGA or HP and I’m beginning to think I really wouldn’t want to. Also, I make no money.
Spoilers: The Game, Common Ground, the Siege
A/N: As I started writing this fic before ‘The Deathly Hallows’ came out and the elements of the end of the war (and the people who died) in this version are much different, we’re just all going to have to pretend that I wasn’t Jossed bigtime. Also, big thanks to
dossier for reading it over and useful suggestions.
Summary: The conclusion of the fic also known as 'the one in which John is James Potter.' In this part: James back in Hogwarts, Rodney in Diagon Alley, Draco in a heroic role, Wraith in the marshland, Harry in mortal peril and John in Rodney.
THE LAZARUS CURSE
And Other Reasons Why the Good Can Never Die Young
By Gaia
Part I Part IIa Part IIb PART III:
Reginald Hornbeam was of an old wizarding family. The sixth child, and the only boy, he often went unnoticed. He was a small, mousey man, who wore a worn bowler hat like a shield, and stood hunched over, intelligent blue eyes shadowed by eyebrows like caterpillars, bushy and white and slightly hungry looking.
But Reginald was a kind soul, of the type that Voldemort would simply overlook, despite his bloodline, and Reginald was content that way. He was one of those wizards who pitied muggles; for all that they lived without. Though he had not a malicious bone in his body, Reginald possessed more than his fair share of pity.
And so, ministry clipboard and auto-answer-quill firmly in hand, he set off for the marshland. They said that nobody cared about the marsh people, but Reginald did - at least in the way that a shepherd cares for his flock, and this particular sheep was several weeks overdue for her post-natal check-up at St. Mungos.
There was something odd and still about the cottage, for the marsh people were a suspicious folk, and always kept a light on in their small swamp dwellings. Reginald did not notice this, however. He had never bothered to ask.
So he stepped up carefully to the door, adjusting his bowler hat and nervously smoothing the wrinkles of his suit before knocking. After a moment, he cursed the young mother for her careless disregard for he child before taking out his wand and whispering Alohamora at the door.
It swung open, but Reginald was surprised at what met him on the other side - not a poor delinquent wretch, ready to receive a lecture, but a snake, larger than any he had ever seen in his rather uneventful life. Its eyes glittered a deep yellow, even in daylight and its scales were a strange mottled blue like moonlight on a mountain lake.
The last thought Reginald had, as it wound itself carefully around his neck, was to feel sorry for this poor disfigured serpent, with patches like mouths where its diamond pattern should have been.
<<<>>>
“McKay!” Colonel Carter was shouting. “I didn’t authorize this kind of power usage.”
“Oh,” he waved her away, like the annoying horsefly that she was.
Carter growled. Normally, Rodney might have stopped to take notice (yes, he was in a loving monogamous relationship, but he was still human), but his heart wasn’t in it. John was taking a three-week vacation to England - land of rainy days and sexy accents, and the fact that the Brits had bad teeth probably wouldn’t even deter Colonel Manwhore. The thing was, John never set off trying to seduce the chieftain’s daughter or end up in a drunken and naked in a ceremonial hut with the shaman and his ritual towel boys, Rodney trusted him enough to know that John would never go out looking to cheat on anybody. But that didn’t mean he could be left unsupervised. He was the kind of man who would find a guy’s cock half-way up his ass and wonder, ‘Hm, I wonder how that got there?’ Besides, he got in enough trouble with Rodney there to guard his back (and his front). And three weeks was a long time. Rodney was perfectly justified in worrying.
“McKaaaay.” Carter waved her hands in front of Rodney’s face, blue eyes glittering.
“Hmm?”
“As much as I hate to ask . . . are you feeling all right? You seem distracted.”
“Oh, well, yes . . . fine.” He snapped his fingers a few times for good measure, pointing in the direction of the pile of equipment they were supposed to be working on.
Carter rolled her eyes. Not that Rodney cared. He was so over his superior-blonde-bimbo phase.
His fingers twitched, fingering the Ancient Data device currently burning a hole in his pants pocket. He’d told himself that he wouldn’t look - that he trusted John. It wasn’t like the device could pick up him having sex with Dr. Pinloop in the bathroom of Denver International Airport anyhow.
Rodney was 37 years old, with 3 PhDs, head of a group of world-class scientists saving the galaxy on a regular basis, and in the best relationship of his life, surely he could manage to demonstrate a modicum of self-control.
Carter gave him a suspicious look. She was right. Who was he kidding?
With a long-suffering sigh, Rodney reached into his pocket and pulled up the program he’d tied into the Daedalus’ orbital scanners, and . . . what the FUCK was John doing in London? He’d kissed Rodney goodbye before leaving for the airport two hours ago. That wasn’t even enough time to get through airport security.
Rodney closed his favorite laptop, threw it in its bag along with a handful of powerbars from the box some frightened-looking airman had dropped off, some pens and paper, his cell phone, and the lab’s bottle of hand sanitizer. He stuffed his sidearm and a few clips into outer pocket for good measure.
“McKay?” Carter asked, looking genuinely worried. Good for her.
Unfortunately, Rodney couldn’t use his usual ‘world’s ending, have to go save the day, leave me alone you incompetent moron’ excuse, because Carter got all nosey and proprietary about that sort of thing. Rodney pointed over his shoulder at the door. “Personal . . . thing . . . gotta go. You just . . . keep up the good work.”
He edged away from Carter’s bewildered look and out into the hallway, tapping his radio the second he arrived. “Novak, this is McKay, if you don’t beam me up this second, you’ll be hiccupping your last.”
A second later, she and Rodney were face to face standing onboard the Daedalus, where it was in orbit making repairs.
“Good to . . . [hiccup] . . . see you, sir. Are you here to help with the engine . . . [hiccup] . . . manifold problems? [hiccup].”
Rodney snapped his fingers impatiently. “Lock on to Sheppard’s subcutaneous transmitter and transport me about fifty meters away.”
Novak hiccupped, looking at him with wide doe-like eyes. Too bad Rodney ate doe-like animals for breakfast (unfortunately, sometimes literally, if the mess staff was feeling particularly adventurous).
“I hear that it helps if you stand on your head and drink a cup of egg whites and vinegar through a straw,” Rodney offered sarcastically. “Now, what are you waiting for?”
“Yes, sir,” Novak squeaked, dematerializing him before she could hiccup again.
Rodney rematerialized in a bar. It figured. John wasn’t an alcoholic by any means, but he did love his beer - Guinness, particularly, and regardless of how he magically arrived in London, it was no surprise that the first place he hit was a pub (and the associated British hussies).
And trust Sheppard to find the most beat-up depressing run-down bar in the city. Rodney looked around, annoyed not to even earn a drunken stare, due to the fact that he’d just appeared out of thin air. But then again, the only customers were an old woman with skin so stretched and gnarled it was a miracle food managed to find her two yellowed teeth and a younger man wearing a women’s nightgown, a maroon cummerbund, and yellow rain slicker. Plus they were drinking at three in the afternoon.
Rodney hadn’t been to London for years, but judging by this place, it’d managed to get even bleaker and more traditional - the place was light by candles for christsakes.
Luckily for Rodney, the customers seemed equally nonplussed when Rodney pulled out his scanner as they did when he appeared out of nowhere. Now, according to these readings, John was out the back and around the corner, in a crowd of people. With a nod to the guy in the rain slicker, Rodney walked out the back, only to be met with a brick wall.
“Huh,” he remarked. He’d have to go around.
Except, there was no way around. The lifesigns were there blinking happily away, but he didn’t find any back doors in the two shops next to ‘the Leaky Caldron’ (what the hell kind of name was that - sounded like food poisoning). And a long walk around the block revealed no entrances to the alleyway that should have contained all those lifesigns.
After several trips around, Rodney finally consented to asking for directions, but he was met only with blank stares and mutterings of ‘Crazy Yanks.’ If he weren’t so annoyed at the John-dot hovering so tantalizingly close, he might have let these idiots know that he was Canadian, thank you very much.
He was ready to suffer through another round of hiccupping and get Novak to beam him into the stupid alleyway, when one of the three lifesigns in the pub moved through the back to join the other lifesigns in the huddle. Maybe he’d missed an exit.
Rodney made his way back to the pub, ignoring the barkeep of Notre Dame and the gnarled-looking grandma-gin and followed the man in the rainslicker’s route out the back, to . . . a brick wall. Running the scanner over it, Rodney was surprised to find an interesting power reading coming from the wall itself - three bricks in particular. He pulled out the scanner’s focusing tray and touched it to each of the bricks, seeing he could figure out what was inside. Trust Sheppard to wander into the only bar with Ancient devices buried in the brickwork.
Except, there was nothing buried in the brickwork, because when Rodney next looked up, there was a doorway in front of him, and beyond, a street of the most strangely dressed people Rodney had ever seen. What was this? One of those pride parades? Was John leaving him for a British linguist because he wasn’t gay enough? He was plenty gay! And if John really wanted him too, he’d drape himself in a black cloak and shirts with ruffles and such. Love was supposed to involve some compromise, after all.
Rodney looked down at the scanner. John was in one of the shops, about fifty meters ahead. Rodney crept forward, sparing barely a glance for the gay-sex-shop, claiming to sell ‘wands’ or the antique bookstore, or even new-age medicine shop offering dragon’s liver at half price. He did pause for a second to look at a particularly hideous cat laying curled in the window of what appeared to be an exotic pet store, however.
John was in the shop with nothing but brooms in the window. They looked sleek and stylized, with large signs proclaiming ‘Cleansweap’ or ‘Nimbus3000’ and other things far too sophisticated for a broom. It swept, it was less confusing than a vacuum cleaner. What more was there too it? In fact, on behalf of homosexuals everywhere, Rodney was rather insulted that the British didn’t seem to think that people who could clearly operate an electric ‘wand’ could handle a dustbuster.
Not wanting to be spotted, Rodney ducked into the shop across the street, regretting it almost instantly. A plump woman wearing a red robe trundled up to him, a bright smile on her face and a pointy stick in hand. She looked like a walking tomato.
“Oh my!” she exclaimed, taking in Rodney’s ‘Astrophysicists have the biggest telescopes’ t-shirt, his worn khaki expedition pants and leather necklace with the dinosaur tooth on the end of it (Ronon had given it to him after he’d managed to get three of his six bullets into it before it ate Teyla). “You poor dear. You look like a muggle!”
Rodney didn’t know what to make of that, so he blinked and replied. “Actually, Canadian.”
“Ah, they do have some strange trends there, across the pond. What can I do for you, Mister . . .”
“McKay. Doctor Rodney McKay.”
“Very well, Doctor. Are you here for dress robes, or just something casual to wear about town? If you’re headed for the Ministry, I’d suggest a simple black, with the velvet collar - one of our top sellers.”
Rodney looked at the woman nervously. John was still in the cleaning supply store and Rodney was beginning to think that these people weren’t so much gay as in some crazy cult (which John and Carson and Dr. Pinloop clearly belonged to). What if they were headed for some cult ritual? What then? Maybe he should get something, so he didn’t look too conspicuous.
He turned to the woman, who was eyeing him sternly, still brandishing the stick. “I’m just here waiting until my . . . friend is done at the broom store. Maybe . . .”
The woman’s round face lit up like a pumpkin at Halloween. “My dear, if you’re trying to impress a young woman or man, you just had to say so. Madame Malkin has just the thing.” She grinned and proceeded to wave the stick around behind Rodney’s back. He felt a measuring tape across his shoulders and promptly focused his attention back out the window, checking to see if John had exited the shop.
There were seven other lifesigns in there, one sticking close to John - Pinloop, no doubt. Rodney gritted his teeth, not even noticing Madame Malkin bustling out of the room.
She retuned five minutes later (though it felt like thirty to Rodney), holding out an embroidered silk robe of the most ridiculous color cerulean blue that Rodney has ever seen. “What the hell is that?!”
Madame Malkin smiled one of her most patient smiles and replied, “Just try it on, dear.”
Rodney grumbled, but decided to humor her, seeing as how he’d have to wait for John here anyhow. He pulled the robe over his head, managing to get lost in it, before Malkin pulled it down.
“There, there, perfect, dear! Brings out those beautiful blue eyes. You’ll have the lucky witch or wizard faster than Krum can snatch a snitch.”
“Hm . . .” Rodney answered, flipping the scanner to track energy signatures and marveling at how they seemed to be jumping and nearly exploding all around. He’d be off tracking them, if it weren’t for the fact that he was here spying on John and needed to keep hidden. He was so absorbed in wondering what could be causing so many spikes like this, that he failed to notice the needle and thread making the finally fittings on his robe, gliding through the air by magic.
“You look very handsome,” Madame Malkin pronounced, the second the last stitch was sewed. “Twelve galleons, please.”
“What?” Rodney asked.
“Payment,” she held out a hand, sternly.
“Oh, right.” Rodney fished out his wallet and a MasterCard.
“Not muggle money, dear. I don’t know how they do things in Canada, but this is Diagon Alley. You’ll have to go to the bank and exchange it.”
Rodney was just about to ask what the hell was a ‘muggle’ and demand to know what respectable shop didn’t take credit card, when he spotted Dr. Pinloop heading out of the cleaning store, carrying a broom-sized package and trailing a blonde John Sheppard behind him.
“Oh my god, he’s having a midlife crisis,” Rodney breathed. Though John looked gorgeous with blonde hair, his aviator sunglasses and more piercings than Rodney could count. “He’s joined the gay antiques roadshow cult, died his hair blonde and decided to have an affair with a social scientist!”
Clearly spotting an impending panic attack, Madame Malkin patted Rodney’s arm, waved the stick at him, muttering something about cheering charms, and told him. “Why don’t you run along and talk to him. When he sees you in this, he’ll forget his crisis. You can send me the money by owl. I’ll cast a credit spell, so just make sure you remember to send twelve galleons within three hours or the robes will transport themselves right back here, with interest.”
Rodney nodded, not really listening. John . . . blonde . . . it was like a moth to the flame. Rodney stumbled out of the shop, transfixed by the unruly yellow tufts, as John and Pinloop made their way into a store called Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezies. A toy store - it figured.
This place was packed, crowded enough that Rodney could get close if he ducked behind racks of strange candies or spinning talking tops or other (admittedly) clever inventions. John and Pinloop were standing next to a large display of rather impressive fireworks, and if Rodney pretended to bend over and tie his shoe, he could maybe inch closer and . . .
Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a kid with violently red hair crouched next to him, slinging an arm around Rodney’s shoulder. Rodney yelped, but thankfully, nobody seemed to hear over the grating noise of what appeared to be a singing fichus plant.
“Don’t scare a man like that!” Rodney exclaimed in a harsh whisper. “If I died of a heart attack just now, you’d have both the Nobel committee and the fate of the world to answer to.”
The kid grinned, looking skeptical. “George Weasley.” He grabbed Rodney’s hand and shook it.
Rodney looked at him blankly.
George gave a put-upon sigh. “George Weasley, co-owner of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezies.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be co-owner of anything? Shouldn’t you be off, terrorizing the rational adult population or something?”
“Exactly the reason we started this shop, mate.”
“Nice to meet you, now will you leave me to eavesdrop in peace?”
George grinned, looking altogether up to no good. “Actually, that’s why I popped over here. Couldn’t help but noticing you spying on Professor Lupin and that blonde guy and I thought you could use one of these.” He pulled out something that looked rather like a pink string of silly putty, rolling it out over the floor, right behind John’s foot and handing the end to Rodney. “Extendible Ears. I’ll tell you what. I like you, so the first one’s free,” he patted Rodney’s shoulder lightly. “Hope you get your man.”
What was this place? Alley of the robed yentas? Rodney sure hoped this wasn’t the sign of another sex ritual coming on.
But then any pondering of his strange surroundings (and the things that seemed to happen to people when they put the candies in their mouths) were wiped from his mind by the conversation he was hearing through the listening device.
“But I don’t know what to get him,” John was whining. A present for a lover? The bastard. Rodney knew he was trouble the second he’d first cocked those narrow hips in
Rodney’s direction.
“You don’t need to get him anything,” Pinloop replied with a sigh. “I’m sure you turning up will be more than gift enough.”
“Yeah, well I still want to get something. I know he’s been through a lot. Just something to cheer him up.”
“Look, James . . .” JAMES! Since when did John have a blonde alter-ego? And . . . if Rodney wasn’t mistaken, he’d been speaking with a British accent. Oh, Jesus. If only he could think of an explanation other than ‘jealously stalking my boyfriend’ he’d have an SGC extraction team here right now, checking for Goa’uld. “Harry donated his prize money from the Triwizard Tournament to the Weasley twins so they could start this place - he has his pick of all their products. He’s not one for material goods. He’ll just be happy to see you.” Pinloop was squeezing John’s shoulder now, and Rodney was getting increasingly angry (at least as much as he was freaked-out).
John smiled, his sweet shy smile - the one that only Rodney was supposed to see. “He won the Triwizard Tournament? He gave away his winnings?”
Pinloop returned the tender smile. “He’s something, James. And I think it’s time you stopped stalling and we went and saw him.”
John grinned, taking the broom-shaped package and practically bouncing towards the door.
“Are you sure we can’t take the train?” Pinloop shouted, trotting after him.
Rodney rolled up the listening device, making a note to himself to figure out how it worked in the lab. By the time he made it outside, John and Pinloop were standing on a dais in the middle of the street, straddling a broom in a way that screamed sex-ritual, before John kicked off and they were . . . flying, on a broomstick.
Rodney blinked. He pinched himself. He looked down at the scanner, watching two dots speed off frame. And finally, he settled on numb gaping. He’d call the mountain and get a pick up and a team here. Whatever crazy energy readings John had led him to in London was clearly some sort of Ancient-implanted hallucination machine. Robes and broomsticks and eye of newt?
Rodney made his way toward the forbidding marble edifice of the bank, figuring that it looked like a safe place to make a phone call, and maybe regain his sanity - solid.
But then he saw a midget with long pointy ears, a shriveled face and spectacles. “I’m going crazy,” he whispered in the voice he saved especially for the end of the world. And with that, he drew his gun.
<<<>>>
Harry Potter sat staring out at the shimmering surface of the lake. The giant squid lay next to him, basking in the first rays of spring sunlight. There was still a hint of winter chill floating on the wind, but Harry leaned into the numbing breeze that ruffled his hair. He let his fingers run absently over the bandages he kept tied tight across his forearm. Even under the thick wool of one of Mrs. Weasley’s sweaters, he could feel it burning into his skin, worse than a scar. And with every touch, the memories came flooding back - so many thoughts - his, Voldemort’s, dark and swirling and poisonous. Harry felt wiped clean, numb only because he had not choice. It was either empty himself out like the ebb of the tide or let the darkness consume him. Voldemort’s soul was an evil one and his life an open promise for more death and hate and destruction, but Harry had ended that life nonetheless, and a death, any death, split your soul in two. Souls knew that rule and they didn’t separate good intentions from evil.
Harry sighed, wondering, not for the first time, why he was here. Yes, nearly all of his classmates (except for Neville Longbottom, buried beside Dumbledore’s white tomb), had returned to finish off their schooling, regardless of the lessons they’d learn in the fight. If Harry wanted a future in the wizarding world, he would have to graduate too, if only to prove that he was subject to the rules just like any other boy. But the truth was that his teachers (with the notable exception of Professor Snape), let him off easy. Even McGonagall would just sigh, accepting his work in late, compassion in her old, wise eyes. He could see what they were thinking - they were wondering how long Harry would last.
He was wondering that himself. He turned to the giant squid, his best companion these days - Ron and Hermione had been through war too, yes, but they couldn’t understand and their presence was cloying at best, excruciatingly awkward at worse. Nobody knew what to say, except for the giant squid, who blinked a lazy yellow eye and him and bleated, “Wanker!”
Harry gazed across over towards the castle, expecting to see students milling around on the grass, reading on the great stone steps or holding hands and ambling through the gardens. Even Ginny was an unwanted presence now. Her skin felt rough and ice-cold on his, and though she tried to kiss him or draw him down and into her like that one desolate night hiding in the forest, he couldn’t stand the thought of touching her - a girl he knew only as innocent and good, with the disgusting thing that he had become. The hurt in her eyes when she looked at him now was too painful, so he avoided her as he avoided everything.
But, there were no students out on the lawn today. Instead, two men were arguing, their shouts drifting in as a soft murmur on the wind. Harry leapt to his feet, recognizing Professor Snape, his black cloak drawn around him like the most righteous fury. He had his wand out and right before Harry’s eyes there was a flash, the other man, in a black shirt and jeans, ducked easily out of the way, throwing a curse right back. Was this man a Death Eater? Harry didn’t recognize the shock of dark hair or the pointed handsome features from this far away, but he was running now, wand drawn automatically.
The voices were clearer now.
“. . . kill you, Severus . . . you were with him. If you knew, you did nothing to stop it!” the stranger was shouting, ducking behind a stone statue and hurling a wordless curse.
Snape looked calm, not even breaking a sweat as he effortlessly summoned a shielding charm. “And you? How I am I to believe that you are really here? At best you are an imposter, or a piece of dark magic gone horribly wrong. At worst, you have succeeded where the Dark Lord failed and are a thousand times more dangerous.”
Harry had made it to an all out sprint by now, watching them continue to send spell after spell at each other, Snape advancing until the stranger flung himself at him, hands and arms moving so fast and smoothly that Harry was convinced he’d used a spell to achieve such grace. Snape was on his knees, hand twisted behind his back with a wand at his throat.
“I’m none of those things!” the man shouted. “But what the hell are you, Severus? At best the same old Snivelus, at worst, the man who claimed to love a girl and then let the enemy into the house to kill her family? Was it worth it? Your jealousy? Did you go out and celebrate with your Death Eater buddies?”
Snape struggled, unable to throw the stranger off, or seeing Harry creep in from behind. “You can’t possibly know the guilt I felt! You don’t know how I worked from that day onward as a spy for the Order, how I turned on the Dark Lord in the end! I did it because of what happened to her! Because he broke his promise! Why else would I still be here, James?”
Harry stopped dead in his tracks. James? His father? He was dead. It couldn’t be. James Potter had died and Harry had lived his life an orphan. His father couldn’t be alive, because his father wouldn’t have let his son live in a closet under the stairs at number four Privet Drive. James Potter wouldn’t live hidden away while his son went off to face the greatest evil known to the wizarding world time after time. James Potter never would have let his son face that enemy in the final showdown, and he never, ever would have let his son grow up without a father, if he could have been there.
But then, the man grabbed Snape’s wand, pushing him down to the ground and pointed his own wand at him. “Stand up. I’ll let Remus explain it.”
“If you’re really here, then you’re still the man who left his son alone in a fight a boy never should have had to fight,” and there was more than just accusation in Snape’s tone. Harry was blindsided by he care inherent there - Snape wanted to protect him. After all the times they clashed, Snape had wanted a different fate for Harry and that shook his perception of the world to its core.
“I know,” the stranger . . . his father, whispered, lowering the wand.
Harry pounced, then. He barely understood what he was doing, but he was tackling his father into the elongating shadows playing out on the grass, staring into intelligent hazel eyes, and sharp familiar features he’d traced in a photo a million times. The punches came swiftly, anger burning through him, thicker than the emptiness, brighter than the darkness. He was crying, sobbing, punching and screaming until the emotion flowed out of him and he was collapsed on top of a warm, solid chest, rising and falling with deep, stuttering breaths.
His father had not fought back, not once, and when Harry was tired, emotionally wrung out and almost unable to move, the man reached up, cupped his cheek and smiled. “Harry.”
<<<>>>
In his 35 years as an Auror, Mad-eye Moody had never seen anything quite like this. He watched the man in the holding cell carefully through the Spy-mirror mounted on the wall of his office. Now the man seemed to be using some form of muggle portable communications device to wave at the wall. Nothing happened, of course, this was the Ministry of Magic.
His eye tracked Kingsley easily as the tall, severe-looking man made his way into the office. Mad-eye grunted his acknowledgement.
“I apologize for my late arrival, some business with a missing record-clerk in the marsh. But, eventually the aids to the Wizengamot say that they have no idea if we can even try him,” Kingsley announced, scratching his head. “What’s he doing now?”
“I don’t have a clue.” The man had finally stopped yelling, and put down his device, though he seemed to be grumbling about ‘shielded from transporters’ or something like that - as though he expected the room not to be charmed and apparition-proof. “He must be a wizard. He walked right in to ‘the Leaky Caldron.’ Witnesses saw him apparate, he made it back into Diagon Alley.”
“Yes, but where’s his wand? Why does the Department of International Magical Cooperation report that neither the Canadians nor the Americans have them on their registers? Why did he scream about somebody flying off on a broom as though it were impossible news?”
Mad-eye growled, “Maybe he’s putting on a show.”
“For what purpose? You certainly don’t think that he was trying to rob Gringotts with a muggle weapon? He is a muggle - and he was scared of the Goblins. That is the only logical explanation.”
Mad-eye glowered, standing and heading for the cell, not waiting for Kingsley to follow him.
“Oh, finally,” the man said. “What are you going to keep me in this horribly 16th century prison cell until I crack and join your crazy robe-wearing, wizard-fetish cult? I’m a very important man, you know. And they’ll be looking for me . . . . Hermiod won’t just sit on his little grey hands when he needs me to solve his ridiculous hyperdrive efficiency equations. He’ll tell Caldwell and we’ll see how you like the Air Force going medieval on this place! Hey, there’s something wrong with your eye.”
Mad-eye rolled said eye, using a quick charm to draw a chair out of thin air, force the man into it, and securing him with magical bindings.
“We are going to have to perform a monstrous memory charm if you keep on like this,” Kingsley remarked blandly.
“What?” the man gulped, eyes going wide and scared - exactly how Mad-eye liked his prisoners. “How did you . . . oh, right hallucinations.” He pointed to his head. “Energy signatures, something wrong with the transporter, maybe I really did crack my head open against the cave floor on PV8-937 and this whole thing is just a coma-induced nightmare.”
“If it helps, I can assure you that I’m real,” Kingsley replied, offering the man a smile. Good-Auror, bad-Auror, it was an interesting game.
“Well, my last hallucination did admit to being a hallucination, so . . .”
“Maybe he’s crazy, that’s how he wandered into Diagon Alley,” Kingsley offered.
No, no, far too convenient. Mad-eye glared. “Your wand.”
“Excuse me?” Kingsley demanded.
“Give me your wand.”
When Mad-eye’s fellow auror reluctantly handed it over the man, a muggle ‘Doctor’ as Kingsley had explained it, looked at him with wide eyes. “You actually meant a magic wand? It just keeps getting better and better.”
Mad-eye handed the wand over, moving around to point his own at the man’s neck and releasing the bonds on one of the man’s hands.
“Why, thank you, I now have a stick. What am I supposed to do with this, exactly?”
“Swish and flick,” Kingsley replied.
The man was muttering something now about ‘like Ancient technology, think on . . .’ and sure enough, a plum of red sparks shot out of the tip. “Aha!” Mad-eye crowed. “He’s a wizard, Kinsley, and we can do whatever we want with him.”
“No, no, you can’t. I’m not a wizard. I just waved the stick. Nothing to see here. Just let me go and . . .”
Mad-eye grinned, “No what are you afraid of Mister . . . McKay? There are ways other than the Cruciatus to earn your compliance.”
McKay gulped. “It was stupid, okay? I was being jealous and petty and I know he wouldn’t cheat on me. I swear! I know he wouldn’t have said he loved me if he didn’t mean it. I just . . . it’s hard to believe that someone like him would really want someone like me, that’s all. But I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll just go back to my own country, pretend this was a strange energy-spike-induced set of hallucinations. Nobody will be the wiser, eh?”
“I don’t think so,” Mad-replied, conjuring a jar and whispering, “Accio spiders” until it filled. “You look to me like an arachnophobic.”
“Wait. Who was it that you were following?” Kingsley stopped to ask.
“John. John Sheppard. You know, tall, rakish-looking, dark messy hair . . . well, blonde now thanks to the midlife crisis, smile that causes women (and some men) to spontaneously disrobe.”
Mad-eye and Kingsley exchanged a look. “Never heard of ‘em,” Mad-eye remarked, summoning one of the spiders out of the jar and making it creep up McKay’s arm.
“What about Dr. Pinloop!” McKay was squealing. “What was his first name . . . John was always saying . . . Remus! Remus Pinloop!”
Mad-eye dropped the spider, watching it scurry away and into the corner. “Lupin?”
“I’ll summon him using our old Order channels,” Kingsley replied, stalking out of the room, a man on a mission.
“I knew that man was trouble!” McKay crowed, right until the fancy blue robes he was wearing vanished, and Mad-eye got more than a magical eye-full of things he really did not need to see.
<<<>>>
Harry couldn’t believe it, as he helped his father up, guiding him and his already darkening black eye up the main steps and towards a private place where he hoped they could talk, he couldn’t help stealing glances out of the corner of his eye. It really was him. It was James Potter. Harry could barely believe it. It was as though all the breath had rushed out of him at once - the world was spinning out of control and no matter how he clawed at this lightheaded feeling circling him, it would not tilt back on its axis.
“Now, Harry, I . . .” his father stuttered. “I don’t know what I can say to you to make any of this better. But I’m sorry and I will explain. I . . .”
Before he could finish, Professor McGonagall was rushing at them from down the corridor with the biggest smile Harry had ever seen on her stern face. “James! James Potter, you’re really here. I read the notice myself, but I hardly thought . . .” she exclaimed, stepping forward and embracing the man, fussing over him and his black eye, before hugging him once more and finally letting him go. “It’s wonderful to have you back,” she finished, before finally seeming to notice Harry. It was truly the most excited Harry had ever seen her. She looked at him with a twinkle in her wise eyes and said, “Well, I’ll let the two of you catch up. Come on up to the headmaster’s office when you’re ready, James. The password’s ‘treacle tart.’”
“Of course, Professor McGonagall,” he replied.
“You’re almost forty years old and a father of a Hogwarts student now, James. You can grow up and call me Minerva.”
Harry’s father smiled shyly, nodding. “I’ll see you then, Minerva.”
“See that you do. Good evening, Harry,”
But before she turned to go, Harry grabbed at her robes, desperate. “Is he really my father, Professor?”
She smiled at him kindly, clasping his shoulder. “Yes, Harry, he is.”
Harry nodded, letting the information sink in. His father. Alive. Here. His father was already making his way up the winding corridors towards Gryffindor Tower, looking over his shoulder and grinning, sheepishly.
Harry followed, as if in a dream, silencing the Fat Lady’s squeals of delight at seeing her old pupil with a curt, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” one of Hermione’s stranger security measures. Harry tried not to think of Neville and what he would have made of that.
It was nearing dinnertime, so the common room was void of anyone but a few giggling first years and Ron and Hermione tucked in a corner by the fire in one of those silly couples’ poses they’d been so fond of recently, Ron’s arms tight around Hermione’s waist. Of course, the second she spotted them, Hermione was pushing Ron off, ignoring his annoyed complaints and staring at Harry, mouthing, “Is that . . .”
Harry nodded, smiling wanly and mouthing back, “I’ll explain later,” before grabbing his father by the elbow and leading him up the staircase to the boy’s dormitory and the individual rooms reserved for the seventh years. Harry cleared his potions homework off the bed, and plopped down, watching his father straddle the desk chair, scrutinizing Harry with open, astonished eyes.
“Harry,” he said, squirming.
In Harry’s mind, his father was calm and gentle and brave, and always knew the right thing to say, but maybe, this man was none of those things. “Where were you?” he demanded, because that was the most important thing.
And what a story it was - death, so strange and indescribable, barely a flicker of memory, a group of people that lived on in the mysteries Harry had glimpsed in the whispers beyond the veil. And then waking up to a new world - America, Antarctica, flying machines instead of brooms and a mission beyond the stars to wonders Harry had never even dared imagine. Perhaps if he were still a child, and not the war-hardened man he’d grown up to be, he might be awed by these stories of planets and people and technology, the way he was once awed by magic.
“I wanted to come back to you,” his father said, looking down at his hands in shame. “You have to know that I would have sacrificed myself again and again so you’d never have to go through what you did.” There was something fierce in this man, unexpected too - it was the kind of love that Harry felt for Ron and Hermione and Sirius and Mrs. Weasley, it burned soul-deep and bright, and yet still, it left him feeling angry.
“Then why didn’t you?” If anything, Harry had needed a father. And as viscerally as he loved this man he barely knew, he hated him for not moving the world to be with Harry.
“Dumbledore came to me in America, after I appeared without my memory. He had charms to let me retrieve it, but also to create a new life for myself among muggles. He believed that . . . the ultimate reason that you were the only one who could defeat he-who-shall-not-be-named was the fact that you’re so much like him, only you chose the path of love instead of hate. There was balance in that, and he was afraid that my return would upset that balance that allowed your soul to so fully destroy his.”
Harry didn’t think it was possible to hate somebody dead and buried, but he did at this moment. Dumbledore had no right. He’d been meddling with Harry’s life from the moment he deposited him on the Dursley’s doorstep seventeen years ago. Yes, Dumbledore’s intentions had always been good, but the power he wielded over people was just as dangerous as that of a dark wizard. He molded the universe to fit his viewpoint and his plan - that was why magic flowed so perfectly through him. And in his hubris, he dared to presume that Harry . . . that everyone would be better off if he was denied the one thing he wanted more than anything else in the world. Dumbledore knew it, too. After what Harry had told him about his vision in the Mirror of Erised, how could Dumbledore turn this man who was now looking at Harry with nothing but love away. What if he had died at Voldemort’s hand? What if his father had died in a war a galaxy away? Because of Dumbledore’s machinations, they never would have met.
His father chuckled hollowly, noting the anger in Harry’s eyes. “Maybe he was wrong and maybe I should have told him to shove it, because despite his best intentions, fathers shouldn’t be kept from their sons. But maybe he was right, because you’re here now and so am I and now we get a second chance. I mean . . . it worked out, right?”
Harry stood, tempted to grab something and hurl it at the wall, except he didn’t have very many things - he’d grown used to a simple life because he’d never had parents to spoil him. “It didn’t work out! Working out would have been if Voldemort had died and I had a mother and a father to show me what to do? I had to defeat him! And I was alone! I had to drag my friends into it, even they were even less prepared than I was, because I had no one else!”
James sighed, burying his head in his hands. “That’s not what I meant. I know it was difficult for you and there hasn’t be a moment when I didn’t wish that things happened differently, but you a good kid, Harry. You should have had a mother and father, but you were strong enough to survive it. Anyone would be happy to have you as a son.”
Harry looked down guiltily, pulling off his robes and sweater before unwrapping the bandage around his forearm. “I’m not as good as you think.” The symbol of the skull and the snake was familiar to them both, and his father couldn’t seem to hide a sharp intake of breath, because even without a single piece of evidence, Harry was convinced that if his father had been there to tell him about magic and help him fight his battles, the sorting hat never would have considered anything other than Gryffindor and he’d never have this abdominal mark.
But instead of the condemnation Harry was expecting in his father’s eyes, James stood up from the chair, pacing and frantic. “He did that to you? He marked you like that?! If he weren’t already dead, I’d burry my nine-millimeter in his chest and I’d kill him!” He ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus . . . Harry,” and then he was on the bed, hugging Harry to him.
“After I killed him, I looked down and it was on me,” Harry stuttered, clutching at the soft fabric of his father’s shirt, feeling comfortable with his own father’s heartbeat pounding fiercely against his chest.
“I’ve been a soldier,” his father spoke slowly and deliberately. “And as a muggle, I’ve killed more people that I could even imagine as a wizard. But if you do it without hate and you feel the pain afterwards, it’s . . . it’s good. The pain tells you that your soul’s intact enough to feel, even if you can't help being marked by it. If it protects good people from evil, then it’s worth it.”
Harry nodded, accepting the words he realized that Ron and Hermione had been trying to say to him for months. He gripped his father tighter, realizing that here was flesh and blood and no matter how he loved anyone else, there would never be an understanding quite like this. And now that his father was here, Harry didn’t ever want to let go.
His father didn’t seem like he wanted to let go either, gripping Harry just as tight. “I don’t . . . I’m not very good at discussing my feelings. That was your mother’s skill. But I want you to know that I . . . I love you and I’m so goddamned proud of you.”
Harry was embarrassed to find tears threatening to spill again, clutching his father tight and breathing in his unfamiliar scent. “I love you too,” Harry whispered, as though it were some great secret.
After a long while, they broke, Harry embarrassingly wiping the tears from his eyes, gratified to see that his father’s eyes were shining as well. “Mum?”
His father sighed and Harry sagged. But then, he’d already been granted this much. It was selfish to ask for more.
Just as the silence was starting to get awkward, the door flew open, revealing Remus Lupin, looking harried and slightly wild, but like a great weight had been lifted for him too. “James,” he announced, “look who I found in a cell at the Ministry of Magic?”
A stocky looking wizard in brilliant blue robes was standing behind him, complaining loudly up until the point that he saw Harry’s father. “John?” the man asked. “I thought you’d dyed your hair blonde. Not that you’re not gorgeous as a brunette, but I have to admit that . . . wait, what in the hell are you doing here? In a castle in the middle of nowhere, flying broomsticks and parading around with these idiots who wave sticks around and act as though they’ve never seen a computer before, and . . .” The man’s voice trailed off, staring at Harry with eyes as wide and intensely blue as his robes. “John?”
Harry’s father, known as John to this man, sighed, explaining reluctantly. “Harry this is Rodney McKay. He’s the scientist on the team I told you about. Rodney, this is Harry . . . my son.”
The man, Rodney, gaped, looking thunderstruck, and hurt. “You never told me you had a son.”
His father stood, clasping Rodney’s arm. “I never told anyone.” James slung an arm around Rodney’s shoulder. “C’mon, I’ll explain everything.”
Harry wanted to beg him not to go, but then he played the thoughts back again - muggle scientist, cell at the Ministry. It was probably best that his father sorted things out with his friend, before the angry-looking man had a heart attack.
Harry’s father looked over his shoulder, smiling fondly, with a look that promised that he would still be there tomorrow.
“So, how’d it go?” Lupin asked, grinning.
<<<>>>
“Son?! Son?!” Rodney exclaimed, pacing back and forth in the large guest room they’d been assigned. “That’s your idea of ‘a little thing I need to take care of?!’ And these people . . . with the wands and the . . .” Rodney spluttered, throwing up his hands.
“If it makes you feel any better, you were never supposed to find out - if you hadn’t been spying on me.”
“Oh, so now I’m the bad guy, after you hold me at arms length for a year, then sneak off to England where you have a son you don’t even trust me enough to tell about. What, did you think I’d leave you? Because I meant what I said. Even with the cult and the broomsticks and the hidden family life, I still love you. I have no idea why. I think I’m cursed.”
John smiled idly. “You’re not cursed. I checked.”
“Yes, because I forgot, the man who I thought was suicidal, but ultimately rational turns out to be some sort of lost savior of the cult of voodoo. With a son.” To say Rodney was angry would be a vast understatement. He was livid, and positive if someone had handed him one of those wand devices, he’d light this place up with sparks of anger. John might even lose his head. He sighed. “Do you really think I would have cared?”
John collapsed down on the bed, looking as tired as the days under Wraith siege, or coming down after the being fed upon and regifted his life. “No, Rodney. It’s not like that. I’m a wizard. It’s . . . it’s something you’re born to. Carson thinks it’s actually the possession of the ATA gene that marks it. I come from an old wizarding family.”
“I always knew you were inbred,” Rodney grumbled.
John ignored him. “I was born to secrecy, Rodney. The wizarding world is separate and independently functioning - our own schools, like Hogwarts, our own government, our own towns. In our society, using magic in front of or on a muggle (a non-wizard) is a high crime. Like with the Ancients, it’s to protect you from us. And to protect ourselves from our own will to power.”
“And from burning at the stake,” Rodney added.
“Yes, well burning isn’t much of a threat to someone who can make cool flames, but if it makes you feel better, now we have a lot more reason to be afraid of muggles.”
“Can’t made a cool nuclear fallout?” Rodney quipped.
“Something like that. You know, I went through my whole life without even knowing anybody who didn’t have magic.”
“Yes, because the Air Force is chock full of magicians. That’s clearly why the military is doing so well these days.”
John looked truly uncomfortable then, wincing. “So, um . . . I might have kinda . . . died.”
“Died! Died?! Like the transparent guy with the jack-in-the-box head?”
“No . . . Rodney. I was murdered. And I Ascended.”
Rodney gaped. “You Ascended and you thought this was perfectly irrelevant information that you didn’t need to share with us?”
“Hey, it’s not as though I remembered any of it. I started a new life - assumed the identity of a major in the Air Force, at apparently the exact wrong time.”
“Afghanistan.” No wonder John was so screwed up - dying and then almost dying in a war he had no clue about almost immediately afterwards.
“I just sort of . . . it’s complicated.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Since when has complexity ever troubled me?”
John smiled then, wearily, telling Rodney his story. And the thing was . . . it explained so much - John’s awkwardness, the way he sometimes seemed too average - a caricature of an all-American soldier, his fear of commitment, the sorrow that seemed to lurk at the edges of his laconic exterior. Rodney barely noticed how he ended up on the bed as well, arm slung over John’s shoulder.
“And why didn’t you just come back? Like Doctor Jackson?”
John chuckled. “That’s even more complicated.”
“Try me.”
John turned into Rodney then, pushing them back on the bed and pillowing his head on Rodney’s shoulder. “Remember how I said that we keep our world a secret to protect you from our desire to dominate?”
Rodney nodded. He could see the analogy to the Ancients and the Ori, of course. With the kind of power, it was tempting to demand obedience - to see others as lesser beings. And maybe keeping yourselves separate was the only way to prevent it. But Rodney truly believed that if you could help, it was your duty to do so. That was what their game of Ancient Civilization had been about, after all.
“Well,” John continued. “There was a wizard did give into the temptation. He believed that pure bloods were superior to muggles, or muggle-borns, and he set about conquering. Actually, he reminded me of your Hitler.” And wasn’t that strange - John referring to the Nazis as a thing of Rodney’s world, when one of the things that had drawn him to John in the first place was there commonalities in a galaxy of strange cultures and uncertainty.
“Hey, he’s not mine. Blame the Germans, if you must.”
John chuckled. “I doubt Doctor Vogel will appreciate that.”
“And he’ll do what? Spite me by eating all the jelly doughnuts?”
“Anyway, this wizard started a war. And Lily and I . . .”
“Lily?”
“My wife.”
Rodney shot up at that, turning to fix John with a glare. “You had a wife too?!”
John shrugged. “Well, yeah. How do you think I got Harry?”
Rodney flapped his hands, in a little bastard born of Colonel Manwhore way. “You um . . . sowed your seed.”
John rolled his eyes. “I’m so glad that I fell in love with a man who thinks so highly of me.”
Rodney couldn’t quite hide his grin at the ‘fell in love with’ comment. “Well, considering how you flirt with everything that moves . . . . And if you don’t, your hair does it for you.”
“Harry wasn’t an accident . . . well, not that kind of accident. We wanted children. He just came at the wrong time.”
“Let me guess. Then you couldn’t just sit on your hands staring at the playpen - you had to go off and charge the evil wizard and sacrifice yourself for the greater good.”
“No. It was hard to stay off the radar, but Harry was more important than what I wanted. But there was this prophecy . . .”
“Prophecy? This really is the land of voodoo. The very nature of quantum mechanics . . . the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, means that you couldn’t possibly predict . . .”
“No, you see, it was the self-fulfilling type. It said that my son, Harry would be the only one to challenge the evil wizard and that neither could live while the other survived. So, it sent the wizard searching after Harry, meaning that he either had to fight back or die.”
“And he didn’t die, so . . .”
“Lily and I died protecting him. That was enough to defeat the evil wizard for a time, but he returned, and Harry was forced to fight him several more times. I got banished protecting him one of those times, but I couldn’t go back because the path of events that had been set in motion couldn’t run their course with my intervention. I was supposed to be dead - that was a critical component of what gave Harry what he needed in order to fight.”
“That, is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Rodney replied. If you acted as though the future were written, you’d be paralyzed by inaction. But, on the other hand, Rodney was glad that John did what he did, because otherwise, they might never have known each other.
“Well, he was my son and this was potentially the most important war on the planet, forgive me for wanting to do the right thing.”
So, John was getting defensive. Rodney lay back down, kissing John briefly before settling in. “I’m not doubting your intentions - just your critical thinking skills.”
“Maybe it was stupid, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. And Harry did defeat the evil wizard, in case you were wondering. He’s the savior, not me.”
“Well, with the way you cast about for crosses to martyr yourself on, I wouldn’t count you out just yet,” Rodney huffed.
John leaned up then, kissing Rodney inquisitively. “So, we’re good?”
“Not remotely,” Rodney replied, kissing back. “You come from a people who run around in black muumuus and wave sticks at things. You’ve been hiding all this technology you can operate from me,” he gestured to the wand. “And you have a son.”
“But you still love me, right?” John demanded playfully, insinuating himself between Rodney’s legs.
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Of course I still love you, idiot. I just . . .” he deflated, flirtatious mood gone in a second. “You have a son.”
“Five minutes ago you were whining about how I supposedly thought you were a bad man who would leave me over a detail like that.”
“And I’m not stupid enough to break up with the best thing that’s ever happened to me because of that. But you have a son.”
“Yes, Rodney, we’ve established that.”
“You have a son. On Earth.”
John looked off into the distance, as sad and beautiful as the man Rodney had fallen in love with. But so much had changed since the arrival of Remus Lupin (the name finally drilled into him on the train ride over). In the last twelve hours alone, Rodney felt as though the world had been turned upside down and inside out.
But then John turned to him, eyes glittering and as intense as Rodney always expected. “We’ll make it work. I promise.” Rodney believed him.
“Now, about these ‘magical’ powers of yours . . .” Rodney asked, nipping at John’s neck.
“Oh, the Great John Sheppard can perform many tricks, make lube appear out of thin air, float himself up and down on your cock . . . you name it.”
Rodney grinned, absorbed in that image and yet . . . “Hold on, just let me set up a sensor and then you can float yourself wherever you want.”
John dissolved into a peel of laughter at that, yanking Rodney back on top of him before he could grab his scanner. “Only you,” he whispered, just before they kissed.
PART IIIb