[recs] Harry Potter/Stargate Ficcing
Some wonderful, anonymous person has been slowly writting me Harry Potter/Stargate fic ever since the Valentine's Day Love Meme. It's so great! It's Harry/Luna, and Ron/Hermione, and Ginny's their semi-grouchy mechanic! She knows Muggle technology, which is so adorable. (Me and my daddy's girl thing love that
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"Colonel Caldwell?" Stephen looked up from the inventory.
"What is that?" he asked, even though he had a rather good idea. The boxy shape could only be one sort of transport he knew of, but that was impossible. "Have they tried to contact us yet?"
"No, sir."
"See who they are and what they want." The inventory laid forgotten in Stephen's lap. He wanted to know how the hell a Puddle Jumper had ended up near the end of the Milky Way.
Getting the ship into the Ministry had been far easier than any of them had expected. The Unspeakables had finally left and all the previously displaced researchers were scrambling around crazily, ensuring none of their projects had been damaged or worked upon in their absence. Hardly anyone blinked an eye when Lisa explained away Ginny and Luna as lab rats and the large box-thing as a controlled testing chamber. It was just that sort of day. Inside the ship, Ron and Harry reviewed several of the scenarios they'd mapped out in the previous week and Hermione checked over their equipment and supplies one last time. They had to be prepared for anything and they were.
They were prepared for absolutely everything, except another, much larger, space ship.
"Hermione," Ron said quietly, "I thought you said Muggles didn't have any missions planned for right now, that no rockets were going up until next week anywhere."
"That's not a rocket," Hermione replied, her eyes huge and round. "That's a real space ship, like Star Trek or something. Those aren't real."
"That looks very real to me," Harry said.
"Well, yes," Hermione snapped. "It does, Harry. That is why I'm confused."
"The light is flashing." Luna pointed to the dash. Ginny frowned at the light for a moment and then a voice filled the ship.
"...tify yourselves, please. I repeat, this is the Daedalus--"
"How do we reply back?" A screen blossomed.
"Like that, I guess," Harry said. "Er... What do I say?"
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Daedalus, we are a group of British tourists. Mind helping us out? We could use some directions back to Earth."
"Ginny!" Ron said, aghast. "You can't just--"
On the Daedalus, Stephen Caldwell was not entirely sure what to say. British tourists? If this was a Go'auld or Ori plot, it was a completely new one.
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*rereads*
*dies again*
*rereads and GLEES MASSIVELY*
Seriously, this fic continues to be made of win!
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Caldwell leaned back in his chair. "Direct them to the loading bay. I want the area secured. If this is a new enemy, I want to be prepared. Have Hermiod ready to beam them into the brig if they start trouble."
"Yes, sir."
Harry flew the ship around to the side as instructed. "Do you see-- oh, nevermind." The bay was open and waiting. "Er, right. So we just fly in and stop?"
Caldwell stopped when he heard that transmission and took a deep breath. "You don't know how to land the jumper?"
"This is the first time we've taken the, er, 'Jumper' into space," Ginny explained.
The techie glanced back at Caldwell who just shook his head. "All right, find out how many are on board and have Hermiod beam them directly to the brig. Marines should report there instead."
"What are we supposed to do with them? We can't take them back to Earth, even if they weren't a security risk."
"I guess we'll be bringing Dr. Weir some gifts."
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"Could you please explain that again?" he asked.
Luna shrugged. "Harry and I were in Egypt when we discovered some parts in the desert. Ron and Hermione came to help us find all the pieces and then Ginny put the ship, sorry, jumper back together. We flew through a veil and ended up in space. We tried to go home, but I think the veil obscures the portal from this end. I'll have to ask Hermione her thoughts; this is the first time we've done this after all."
"Do you have any idea where you are?"
"In space, I presume," Luna said, her lips curved in a soft smile.
"What kind of veil?" The smile disappeared and Luna shook her head. Caldwell knew that the veil had to be important in some way, because this was how the other two had reacted as well.
"We are not your enemies," Luna replied instead. "I do not know who you think us to be, but we are not them." She did not answer anymore of his questions.
Frustrated, Caldwell ended the session and guided Luna down to the cell where the others waited. When the five people had first appeared, wearing such strange garments, Caldwell had been certain they couldn't be from Earth. They had insisted however, and so far each had explained their robes as being a costume for a party.
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"What?"
"Treating us like criminals. Ginny was telling the truth. We did come here by accident, more or less."
Caldwell sat down. "You'll forgive me if I find that difficult to believe." Harry looked up then, looked him directly in his eyes. Stephen wanted to jerk away, but he was frozen. He could feel something in his head stalking through his memories, then Harry looked away and sighed.
"You are at war," he said, simply. "That's why the secrets. We were at war, too. We're still managing some of the fall-out." Harry withdrew a long stick from his sleeve and pointed it at Caldwell's notepad. "Wingardium Leviosa." The pad rose to eye-level and hovered there before falling back to the table as Harry lowered his wand.
Stephen inspected the notepad; it was normal, completely normal. "How?" he asked.
"Magic." He was serious.
"You expect me to believe this."
"Just as much as you expect us to believe this ship and your story when most Muggles on Earth still think going to the moon is an accomplishment."
"Do something else." Harry pointed his wand again and the notepad turned green.
"How?"
Harry shrugged. "You'd have to ask Hermione, she's the one who studies the theory of magic. I just know how to use it."
God help him, Stephen believed the boy. Of course the amazing color-changing floating notepad had helped his belief. "Magic is real."
"Just like space ships and aliens," Harry replied, almost smiling.
Stephen snorted. "Right. How did you get here? Do all magic people cavort through space?"
"No." Harry explained the same story Caldwell had already heard four times already, but he included additional information and details and this time Stephen actually believed what he was hearing. He couldn't keep them in the cell, he realized, not if he wanted to know more.
"You will each have a military escort at all times. For your protection as much as ours. We will not share any classified information with you until Dr. Weir decides you're trustworthy."
"Understood. Does our destination fall under classified?"
"Yes." Stephen guided Harry back to the cell, then radioed for a meeting with his staff to explain what they'd be doing with their lost tourists.
He could not wait to see the look on Elizabeth's face when one of them floated her computer tablet in front of her nose.
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"What?" Hermione asked. Ginny shrugged.
"Maybe this is the afterlife."
"Jail?" Ron asked. "This isn't exactly my idea of paradise."
Ginny waved her hand, slashing the idea aside. "Who said anything about paradise? I think this is limbo."
"We aren't dead," Luna said.
"How do you know?" Ginny challenged. "Right now I think being dead is much simpler and more plausible explanation than that there are really spaceships."
"Ginny, please," Ron said quietly, tightening his arm around Hermione.
Hermione smiled. "I'm all right. I agree this is an unlikely situation, Ginny, but I don't think we're dead either."
Ginny shrugged and began to inspect the doors of the cell. "Just-- this is nothing like I've ever seen before. This technology is completely alien to me."
"Are you sure?" Hermione asked.
Ginny nodded. "As sure as I can be without running a diagnostic charm."
"Maybe there are aliens," Luna said, looking out the cell for Harry's return. She turned around, surprised, when Hermione agreed with her.
"Yes, maybe there are." Hermione and Luna shared a smile and Luna turned back to her look-out. They would be getting their adventure after all, it seemed.
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Six more days left and Ginny wanted to see the innards of the Daedalus, wanted to see how the energy traveled and pulsed. In any other circumstances, she would simply run charms and figure the ship out for herself. However, even though Harry had outed all of them-- an act for which Ron still hadn't completely forgiven Harry-- they'd all agreed upon discretion. Caldwell knew they did magic, but at the moment considered magic to simply be a kind of assisted telekinesis. None of them wished to disabuse of him of this notion. For a while he'd been rather curious about magic-- Hermione had cured him of that.
Caldwell's eyes had begun to glaze over after only a few minutes; Ginny covered her smile and glanced at Ron and Harry. Hermione was in full lecture mode now-- something they had experienced far too many times in school. This time, however, she even had napkin and ink diagrams. Hermione mapped out the simple Levitating Charm into a series of arithmetic equations that even Luna didn't bother to follow. Caldwell turned to Ron and asked if he understood. Ron nodded.
"Of course. This is basic magical knowledge. They won't even let you touch a wand until you can map out all the correspondence equations and explain the effect a wand flick has upon the properties of the W field created by the swish. Simple, really," he said. Even Hermione was choking on laughter.
Later Ginny asked Ron where he'd gotten the 'W field' stuff from and Ron just shrugged. "W for wizard and don't you remember all of Flitwick's lectures about swish and flick?"
Ginny laughed. The ploy had worked, however; Caldwell did not ask about magic again. Ginny wandered in the engine control room and began to ask questions, hoping this time Novak or Hermiod would relent and show her how the Daedalus worked.
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Then the city appeared. Even though they had yet to be told where they were going, their alien destination, Luna knew. Such beauty isolated among waves and stars could be nothing else. Atlantis. Luna tapped the radio Caldwell had given each of them and called the others. "I know where we are going," she said. "Come to the commissary."
Harry arrived first, his hair messier from his sleeping and still wearing his jeans from the day before. Luna moved aside to make room on her seat and grasped his hand. "It's amazing," he said.
"Yes."
"Is that--?" Hermione pulled her hair back with a band and stepped closer to the glass. "That is impossible," she said and she tapped her radio. "Ron, this is worth missing sleep over." She stepped back, her fingers tapped along her lips in a thoughtful tattoo. "This discovery dwarfs the pyramids," she whispered.
"Really?" Harry asked and Hermione nodded, pulling a chair beneath her to sit.
"Yes, oh yes. If Atlantis is real, if this is really Atlantis, then there is so much we should be able to find here. Entire books have been found cataloging the mysteries of Atlantis, the first City, neither Muggle nor Magical, but something beyond both."
Low on the ocean, the sun began to rise, bright, pure, and uncolored. The city glistened and gleamed in the gloaming. From the bridge, Ginny watched. Lindsey had urged her up there as soon as the ship reached the planet and now Ginny was very glad she had.
Seeing the city grow as the ship approached, Ginny felt as she had when she'd seen Hogwarts for the first time or when she first learned Mechamancy. The wonderment filled her chest with possibilities and she knew her life was about to change. No doubts, no second-guessing.
Caldwell called ahead to the city, to Atlantis, and they began their descent. They fell slowly from the stars and landed in the city. Caldwell told Ginny to gather up her friends and then radioed Atlantis about some special cargo. Ginny couldn't not grin as she hurried to the commissary where Luna had contacted everyone from earlier to tell them they were almost ready to disembark. This was Atlantis; as famous as Avalon and now just as real.
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Sorry, originally had them arriving as the sun was setting. The city sparkling with lights from within and without-- the setting sun. However, decided dawn was more appropriate and forgot to change gloaming to dawn or dawning. Apologies.
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The interrogation style was one Harry remembered well, though he'd never been on this particular side of it. Caldwell spoke tersely, demanding answers. Harry responded as he'd been coached, drilled more like. Yes. No. Silence. After an hour or so, Caldwell stood and gestured for Harry to stand up as well. He couldn't go back to the cell like this, not while Caldwell so clearly still saw him and the others as an enemy. The words were out of Harry's mouth before he knew what he was saying.
"Why are you doing this?"
"What?" Caldwell was looking at him again, surprised, but not really pleased.
"Treating us like criminals. Ginny was telling the truth. We did come here by accident, more or less."
Caldwell sat down.
"You are at war," Harry said. He recognized the rigidness in Caldwell's posture, the far-away worry that lined his face. "That's why the secrets. We were at war, too. We're still managing some of the fall-out." Harry pulled out his wand. He could feel the faint thrum of magic within it and he pointed it at Caldwell's notebook, willing with all of his strength for the charm to work. "Wingardium Leviosa." The pad rose shakily as though this was Harry's first use of the charm and hovered in front of the colonel's face. Harry dropped his arm. The pad fell back onto the table.
Caldwell looked over the notepad and Harry took in a deep breath. It worked. The wand still felt warm in his hand. "How?" Caldwell asked.
Harry resisted the urge to smile. "Magic," he said.
"You expect me to believe this." Caldwell was incredulous, but at least he seemed willing to believe. Harry leaned back, relieved.
"Just as much as you expect us to believe this ship and your story when most Muggles on Earth still think going to the moon is an accomplishment."
Then came the inevitable command. "Do something else."
Harry flicked out his wand again, but without any clear intent. This was more dangerous, but less likely to mess up. The notepad turned green.
"How?" Caldwell asked.
Harry shrugged. He had no idea. "You'd have to ask Hermione, she's the one who studies the theory of magic. I just know how to use it."
"Magic is real." He believed him. Good.
"Just like space ships and aliens." Harry still couldn't believe that aliens actually existed. He'd come to accept space ships the first time he and Ginny had flown theirs.
Stephen snorted. "Right. How did you get here? Do all magic people cavort through space?" Unbidden, the image of McGonnagal lecturing in a tartan space suit flashed across Harry's mind and he shook his head.
"No." He explained how he and the others had found the jumper parts in the desert and the risk they'd taken with the veil. He didn't just list facts, but told the story of how he and the others had found themselves adrift in space. He needed Caldwell to understand and believe.
His stomach began to unknot when Caldwell responded to the story by promising to released them from their cells and into the care of escorts. They still weren't trusted, but they were at least no longer criminals. Caldwell continued, "We will not share any classified information with you until Dr. Weir decides you're trustworthy."
"Understood. Does our destination fall under classified?"
"Yes."
Once back in the cell, Harry explained to the others the results of his interview with Caldwell. Ron yelled at him for revealing magic to Caldwell while Hermione asked him to break-down moment-by-moment what he had experienced. Harry brushed them both off and settled back onto a cot. Caldwell couldn't reveal their secrets to the general public without also sharing his own and no matter of study and experiments would ever stabilize his magic again.
Ginny stood up from her corner and announced that her basic diagnostic was finished. The ship was truly alien. While the others bounced around theories, Harry laid back on the cot and waited for Caldwell to come and release them.
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