Harry Potter by Rowling, Stargate SG-1 by Gekko Productions. Spoilers for the book series and for Season Seven's "Fragile Balance"
Inspired by esama's series Wizards IN SPACE and dspeyer's Bad and Worse... I'm consciously borrowing some traits from Susan of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld and heavy influence from Yudkowsky's Methods of Rationality has informed Harry's first visit to Diagon Alley in my first HP fic much more than I'd originally intended...
Loki is a rogue scientist of the Asgard whose long struggle to do whatever it took to save his people apparently single-handedly cemented the bad reputation for abduction and experimentation Stargate Earth held for the Roswell Grays. He only appeared in one episode, but he stars in a lot of good fanfic from authors like jedibuttercup and Hotpoint. Here's one of my takes on the genre.
O.o.O
Harry Potter was a quiet boy with dark, messy hair who kept to himself. He lived in the smallest bedroom of a suburban house in England where nothing really remarkable ever happened. His prized possession was a telescope he'd received for his eighth birthday and he would spend hours gazing through his window at the stars. It took concentrated effort for him to tear himself away from his studies and attend dinner with his family every night; he was rail-thin from a legacy of missed meals. He'd learned the hard way that no-one would call him down the stairs or even set a place for him at the table unless he made a point of hanging around the kitchen while supper was being prepared. Not from any malice he could detect, but simply because he tended to fade into the background. He didn't mind so much as there was so many things more interesting for him do besides interacting with his aunt and uncle and cousin, but it had led to him to being one of the best cooks of his age in town, at least in terms of what one could prepare without waking up the entire household in the middle of the night.
Fifteen minutes before midnight, he stepped off the last stair and turned the corner to see a swift flash of movement cross the kitchen from side to the other. Startled, he raced to turn on the light to reveal that nothing was there. He might have convinced himself that he'd been imagining things had the refrigerator door not been standing open. Grabbing a fire extinguisher for self-defense, he began poking through cupboards until he'd exhausted any possible hiding place. Muttering to himself about he couldn't exactly begrudge anyone their own late night snack, he went about preparing his own meal.
##
The next day was his eleventh birthday.
##
After being gently shooed from the kitchen by Petunia Dursley, Harry Potter laid down his own table setting and orange juice, then wandered over to the stack of mail spread across the breakfast table. Sorting through it for a few seconds, he pulled out a letter and began to read from his position standing just behind Vernon's shoulder. Petunia had enough time to sit and start eating her own meal before Harry shouted "I'm going to be a Wizard!"
Petunia's hand flew to her heart and Vernon startled, slamming his palms into the table as if Harry had appeared from nowhere. It took a few seconds for the older man to process what the boy had said, before he turned in his chair to face him. "Well," Vernon said, carefully appraising his nephew. "It's been ten boring years of waiting for the other shoe to finally drop. It's been very nice having you, boy. Let's hope they keep you."
O.o.O
A week later, on his first trip through Diagon Alley, Harry pulled on the sleeve of Minerva McGonagall who'd volunteered to be his escort for the day. "Can we stop at the bookstore first, please? I really need to see something."
The Head of Gryffindor House shook her head slightly. "I'm afraid our first stop should be the bank and the vault your family left you. There'll be enough time for purchases when you have gold to make them."
"Please, I need to know what I want to get in order to pull out enough money. Besides, I have pocket change that my aunt and uncle gave me."
"Very well." She sighed, staring into his warm, green eyes. "Just one thing, about how people may react when you're out of my sight... What do you know about how your parents died?"
"There were a bunch of random killings when I was young, something that might have been political, and they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
McGonagall opened and closed her mouth, then shook herself lightly, mentally filing something away for later. "Not quite, I'm afraid. Lily and James were some of the few people that stood up against the violence. They were killed for it, defending you, and so helped end it."
"Oh..."
O.o.O
Inside the bookstore, Potter quickly retreated to an out of the way corner with a stack of books, only to find the spot already occupied by a bushy-haired girl.
She glanced upwards and gave him a quick once-over. "I'm Hermione Granger and from what you're carrying I'm guessing you'll be sorted as a Ravenclaw. Their tower has some of the best views in Hogwarts."
"I'm Harry Potter and you must be extremely sharp because most people tend not to notice me unless I'm trying to stand out... Also, I could live in a tower? Wicked!"
"Oh! I've read many of the books about you." Hermione tilted her head and scanned the titles in his arms again. "Can't say I've started in on the astronomy section yet. I'm assuming if it's anything like the rest of the Wizarding World they're either centuries behind computer-assisted technology or they have centaur colonies reporting in from Alpha Centauri and everyone has forgotten to tell me..."
Harry chuckled lightly. "Not quite. There's this immense cultural block about having anything actually living leave Earth for whatever reason, but the stuff they can do with magic and light is amazing. Look," he said, opening a book as he sat down and made himself comfortable. "This is what you'd see if you were flying at a fair clip a thousand feet above the surface of Io... And here is a live recording of the first Apollo moon landing as if you'd been standing there to greet them the entire time."
She stared in awe at the book. "Amazing..."
"Yeah. Most Wizarding recordings of this kind only last for a few seconds on loop, but entire teams of wizards and witches were standing by to help capture this moment of cultural significance. I mean, I doubt that half of them can correctly pronounce the science and technology and materials the rest of the world uses to accomplish such feats, but that doesn't mean what they have to teach isn't worth learning."
"I know." She sighed wistfully. "If I could, I'd spend the rest of the Summer going from bookstore to bookstore... Not that I literally would if there's any wish granters listening... Er... If you don't mind my recovery by way of an awkward segue to other books I've read... May I ask, where is your scar?"
Harry's unmarked forehead crinkled in puzzlement behind the thick black rims of his glasses. "My what?"
O.o.O
Around Ten Years Earlier... An Early Morning in September, 1981
In a small hotel in the Wizarding World, Gilderoy Lockhart woke with a pounding headache and flashes of little grey men and bright lights swimming through his head. After a few moments he realized that a lot of the pounding was feet running past his room. Cursing under his breath, he threw on his clothes and marched out, wand at the ready.
Pushing past the makeshift guards that had taken station around a nearby doorway, he announced himself as an intrepid author and well-known explorer who would be perfect for this situation, whatever it was.
"Let him in," came a weary voice. "I've got some time before I'm completely gone, may as well get my life in writing."
Smiling merrily, Lockhart sheathed his wand and entered the room. "From the commotion, you must be the assassin I've been searching for. Good to have finally tracked you down. One of your clients turn on you, for fear of you going public?"
"Nah," said the short man as he struggled to lift his hand from the bed. "My new poison for trapping people in their dreams ate through the sheathe of my boot-knife. I'm waking up in the hospital or behind bars, may as well have a new book waiting for me. You see." He waved at a pile of literature in the corner of the room. "I'm a huge fan, been to five of your signings."
"Er," Lockhart stammered, quite embarrassed that he'd let such a shadowy figure slip through his grasp so many times. Gathering himself, he pulled out his notebook and quill. "Always great to meet a dedicated reader."
A decent interview later, the killer's words trailed off into a droning snore.
Gilderoy Lockhart rose from his chair from with a sigh and, after a respectful pause, called the nearby hotel staff to gather closer to the bed. "Thank you for your support in this dark moment. My only regret is that it was you, not I, and your dedication to this fine establishment that found and captured this despicable man in a very unexciting way." A smooth and languid motion brought his wand to his hand. "I do not know what he'll remember when he wakes up, who knows how his condition reacts with magic, but I'm sure it'll be our word against – Obliviate!"
When Lockhart's favored spell proved to have no effect, not even the faintest shower of sparks despite repeated incantations, he gave a sheepish grin and bolted for the door...
O.o.O
Later That Evening
Doctor Hapforth McGullins was roused from his short slumber by the blaring of alarms from one of the patients' rooms. Speeding ahead of the nurse he'd lost to in last month's potato sack race, he was the first to the door the charms had identified as being suddenly bereft of patient. As he glanced at the chart, he breathed a sigh of relief, with the Wizarding War on, night shifts at St. Mungo's were full of incoming freedom fighters and victims of the Dark Lord's reign of terror – at least this patient had squarely been admitted through his own stupidity.
McGullins opened the door, to search for signs of where his patient may have apparated to, or who might have taken him, only to find the sandy-haired form of Gilderoy Lockhart in bed, exactly where he was supposed to be, covers pulled up to his chest and blinking in confusion at the alarms. Sighing, the doctor waved his wand, dismissing the sirens and dispersing the disappointed crowd piling up at the doorway behind him. Approaching the bed, he asked "Do you know where you are?"
Lockhart rolled his eyes. "Well, obviously St. Mungo's. My vast published adventures have landed me here enough times. The question is, why am I here when I was last in Warwick Town, hot on the heels of the Viscous Viper of Viciousness. Did he sneak through my hotel, poisoning all of us in our sleep for fear of witnesses?"
McGullins coughed lightly, reached for Lockhart's chart and gave it a sharp rap. "I'm afraid that as soon as the rather sordid individual in question slipped into his current coma, you pulled out your wand and began to shout 'Obliviate' at the hotel staff. Needless to say, considering the favored sport of Warwick Town is sheep-tossing, once you proved incapable of even conjuring the most minor Lumos you were sent here with injuries consisting most notably of two black eyes, a broken arm and a rather nasty hex that-"
"Whoa," Lockhart stated. "The Most Glorious Lockhart is never lacking in magic. We can't let anything like that get around. Look." A snap of his fingers had a small orb of fire floating above his thumb. "Something like that simply couldn't happen. I would never attempt such a vile thing, let alone fail at it."
O.o.O
Unknown to the wizards, a small object that blended in completely with the grain of the wood surrounding it was beaming a live-feed to a spaceship orbiting high above Great Britain. In the comforting sterility of his laboratory, the Asgard named Loki sat watching the holograms he had playing in front of him, slightly cringing in the appropriate places. "I still can't get over how the one I picked made his living off of erasing memories," he muttered to himself. "Don't they have any idea how hard it is to get them properly uploaded to their little meat minds? Not even going to bother with getting this set back to him, he can suffer with 'short-term amnesia' on his own."
Standing up, the alien walked over to the restrained figure of the Lockhart clone he'd retrieved from the Wizarding Hospital. "You didn't even last a full day before getting yourself into an interminable situation." Loki frowned. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
The modified human rolled his eyes. "Well, maybe if I'd known I wasn't myself I wouldn't have tried casting spells. This is clearly bad technique on your part."
Loki sighed. "It's a work in progress. If I can work out how to replicate your access to magic with human clones, then I can build an Asgard body with the same abilities and download myself into it. Once I'm well-practiced enough and confident that there are no inherent disadvantages, I'll upload the source code and single-handedly save my species from the degeneration it's suffered throughout the millenia."
"Yeah, yeah. Power trip." The Lockhart clone crossed his legs. "I get that enough from being me. So, what's the next step?"
Rolling his eyes, Loki activated a modified transporter, efficiently disintegrating the failed human clone. Turning to a console, the rogue Asgard scientist sorted through the data representation of the clone's brain, separating out the new memories and experiences it had acquired over its short life, tagged them with the differences from the original and integrated them with the computer's main databank for later perusal.
O.o.O
A Late Afternoon in October, 1981
A loud crash resounded on the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, turning heads throughout the goblin-run Gringotts Bank. In a far corner of the main floor, a wizened goblin sat, confident that if it was any of his business, someone would be running his way shortly.
"Grimtooth," one of his subordinates panted, out of breath from the run. "Someone parked a shipwreck outside."
Grimtooth rolled his eyes. "Sounds like they didn't shore up the sides properly before removing it from the pressure of the water... That's a hell of a littering fee."
"It's full of gold."
"And..."
"He has salvage rights!"
"Oh." Grimtooth's mouth split in a toothy smile as he whipped out a stack of parchment. "That's a horse of a different color."
O.o.O
A Few Hours Later
Arriving in a shimmer of light in the main room of the Hogshead Inn, naked except for a pouch and a knockoff tourist-trap replica of the famous Hogwarts sorting cap perched jauntily on his head, Loki happily walked up the proprietor. "A private booth and the best of the usual, please."
Aberforth nodded smoothly at the little grey alien. "It's a slow time of day, so take your pick. You ever get that unfortunate money situation fixed?"
"Absolutely." Loki pulled a tarnished silver coin from his pouch and idly flipped it in the air. "The goblins are still rather iffy about taking molecularly printed metals but finding some with provenance works wonders. My vault is quite happy."
Settling in comfortably in his seat with his pick of the available wares, Loki took the rare opportunity to relax. Once definitive records had started being kept, the alien had made a point to avoid meddling in Earth-based politics for fear of his experiments prematurely attracting the attention of the Asgardian High Council. Also, with humanity's short life-span, he had long cultivated a perceptional blindness to the differences between individuals for fear of becoming too attached. That said, he had a soft spot for these magical enclaves where non-human sentients tended to blend into the background and there was an institutional level of secrecy barring them from mingling fully with the rest of the world.
After several mugs of firewhisky, Loki was interrupted from his cheerful perusal of notes by his global positioning system announcing that a blank spot on his ship's perceptional map had just filled in. He'd been collecting them ever since first encountering the Wizarding World and it never failed to surprise him how it only took a few words in the wrong place to bring down generations of secrecy and protection. Running a short cross-reference for the new place in south-western England and the keywords that had unlocked it, he found a conversation recorded a few moments before by one of the bugs he'd left in the rooms above his seat at the Inn.
"They're huddled up in the old Potter Place in Godric's Hollow," came the recorded and nervous voice from Loki's system, the alien having decided to hold off reviewing the video feed until later. "If you didn't remember the place from that long list of sites we expected them to use it's because they cast the Fidelius Charm with me as the Secret Keeper..."
While explicit references were not dropped in the conversation between the spy and his handler, Loki had no trouble connecting it to the local self-styled 'Dark Lord' who had been such a figure in recent years. Nodding appreciatively as he switched off the feed, Loki drained his glass. "So, this Peter Pettigrew has sold out the location of a Child of Prophecy? I want one of those for my collection. Yes..."
Trundling out to the main bar, Loki thanked Aberforth again for his exemplary wares and beamed back to his ship.
"Er," hedged a nervous customer. "What was that?"
"That," Aberforth said nonchalantly. "Was a god."
"Oh... Are they all really that short?"
Aberforth Dumbledore shrugged, conveying eloquently exactly how much he was fed up with all the shit he had to deal with just from being related to his brother and how he could give two figs about what his paying customers were up to as long as the color of their money was golden, and went back to cleaning his glassware.
O.o.O
Loki paced out a section of his lab that had a clear view of the stars outside his ship, installing a set of holographic projectors. With a wave of his hand, images of the people and objects occupying a certain bedroom in Godric's Hollow sprang up around him. A few sets of furniture later, including an infant containment device whose blueprints Loki had found in a disused corner of the archive, the holographic live feed was bolstered with solid places to sit and observe.
Awkwardly approaching the side of the replicated Asgardian crib, the alien gave it a careful pat. Devices of its kind hadn't been used since the Asgard had been a thriving biological species rather than the iterations of clones with transferred memories they'd been reduced to. Loki had faint memories of being held in one while someone who may have been his mother hummed a lullaby, but the worry that she'd only been a hologram had him determined to never seek the truth.
Loki gave a dry chuckle as he readied the cloning array, realizing he might be carrying on in his creators' footsteps. "Well, at least this baby will know for certain his mother physically exists somewhere, even if she'll be out of reach for a few days. Still, I feel I'm missing something... Ah, yes." With a few adjustments, the projected image of Harry Potter, Child of Prophecy, faded away. "After all," Loki said with a nod of his head. "Far better for the little boy's psyche that he sees his parents comforting empty air than holding his double."
##
Wary of monitoring spells, as soon as Harry had been left alone in the room, Loki beamed the child aboard the ship for a baseline read, then sent him back almost immediately. The actual cloning process took longer to complete, but one of the nice things about working with infants was that the new being didn't take very long to mature.
##
Harry Potter jolted awake as he found himself suspended in mid-air, four glowing green orbs rotating in front of his face. He vaguely remembered having seen something earlier, a flash of light, but that had been over so quickly it had just blended into the magical background of his life. This, however, was lasting long enough to be scary.
"Do not be afraid," came an odd voice, as Harry turned his head to face it with all the concentration someone a year and three months old could bring to bear. "This is something I'm afraid you need to be awake for, in order for the computer to get a proper read on your memories. Ah, there. The transfer is done and your clone has been sent in your place."
"Bah... Hi," Harry stammered, staring at the grey being with the large black eyes and small mouth. Words failed him, so he sent out a short string of syllables, hoping that the creature would get the right idea and send him home.
His captor shook his head. "Sorry. If you were an adult then I would ensure your... let's say 'sleeping'... through your entire stay. However, you are in possession of a developing aura already capable of channeling energies in a far more efficient way than what I have access to and this might be my best chance to observe accidental grounding effects in a controlled space... So, how about some tests, some television and some ice cream? I could also provide some kittens and puppies, although I find skunks fascinating in the right environment..."
O.o.O
Harry found the next few days bewildering and complicated, especially considering the trouble his 'babysitter' had carrying him around. Needing to walk and climb everywhere without the assurance of a strong pair of arms being there to lift him out of awkward situations was a new experience for Harry, but he was fairly happy with the control he had over his own legs, even if the finer points of hand and mouth movements were still out of reach.
Once he'd figured out he could walk through his parents and that they didn't even seem to hear him half the time, Harry spent most of his time awake staring at the ever-changing starscape through the main window while sprawled across the short and cushioned climbing towers Loki had made in the shape of dragons. Harry had never seen the moon so large nor the globe of the Earth outside of his picture books. Being able to see stars spread around the sun took some getting used to as he was fairly certain they weren't supposed to be out at the same time, although he couldn't exactly remember why...
"Hello," said Loki as he approached Harry, carrying a grey object with yellow and blue highlights in is four-fingered hands. "I thought you might like this. It is a small model of the ship we're in. Here."
Harry stared at the ship in his hands. He knew that there was something here, something he remembered. Very carefully, he set it down on top of the soft purple fabric in front of him and stared at it in concentration.
Loki stared in awe as the model ship slowly began to rise into the air...
A scream from the direction of the holograms had them both spinning abruptly as the toy wavered and then crashed to the ground.
Loki's mind raced as the conflict between Harry's mother and her assailant played out, knowing that he could beam out either of them, or at least send down enough anesthetic gas to knock out the room. In the end, curiosity about the prophecy and the knowledge that he wouldn't care about these humans if they weren't onscreen stayed his hand.
A short time and some deadly flashes of light later, Loki stared down at the crying child he was awkwardly cuddling. "I'm sorry. In retrospect I should have at least turned off the feed."
##
Once Harry had cried himself to sleep, Loki gently untangled himself and walked over to a console so that he might beam aboard a small portion of Voldemort's charred remains. He worked quietly for awhile, knowing there'd be enough time for an in-depth study later when it was back to only him aboard his lonely ship. He'd set out on this trip without the usual research assistants so that he'd be free to dive into his experiments without the worries of paperwork and restrictions, but he wished he had someone to talk to, to help him figure out what he was supposed to be feeling...
##
Breakfast the next morning was awkward to say the least.
O.o.O
Harry watched the floating screen in awe as it showed a very large and hairy man comforting a child who looked very familiar, other than the raw scar etched into his forehead.
"That's Hagrid." Loki nodded in satisfaction, leaning in to finish applying something to Harry's face. "He's going to be taking you to your new home once the wards have been laid properly. That's your clone. Now, there. I've tied a cellular network into your forehead, no, don't pick at it. Don't worry, it'll wash off. It only needs to look good for a few hours, long enough for them to decide that you're you, and that anything strange that happens with your wound is simply because of magic."
A few minutes later, once the clone had been put down for a short nap and Hagrid had stepped out to work on the flying motorbike for that night's ride, Loki carefully made the switch in a bright flash of light. As soon as the original Harry's cries had brought Hagrid running back into the room, Loki shut off the feed from Earth and walked over to where the clone was groggily waking up, held high above the floor in the diagnostic field.
"Hello again." Loki bobbed his head as the scarred replica of a human child began to cry softly. "Don't worry, I know you've had a very scary day, but it will all be over soon." He turned and walked to the console, his mind intent on the next steps of the process. "You're data in physical form, data that I'm going to pull apart and manipulate for the salvation of my species. You're not going to feel a..." His hand froze as he stared in shock at the report of the diagnostic field. "Oh. Oh. Oh! You have an awakened aura!"
Racing past the floating clone to the playpen area, Loki turned on the holographic feed and rolled it back some hours, rapidly cycling through filters until he found the view he wanted. "Right there! The mother's governing body synced with her oppressor's on her death... Where did that start?"
In a haze of magical energy, the two figures in the hologram stood facing each other - one young and vibrant, one dark with deep cracks running through it. A distinct pattern of swirls started in one and spread to the other, tentative at first, but becoming fixed into place even as the spell ending the vibrant one's life was sent out. The victor marched forward, leering over the non-magical spark of life in the crib. Despite the cracks pulsing in increasing violence, a spell was charged and sent out with the intent to kill, but the spell had barely set out on its short journey before it was overtaken and completely obliterated by the shockwave from the spontaneous detonation of the attacker.
While most of the fragments of Voldemort's spirit were drawn into a single wispy ball that was shortly pulled through the new hole in the roof, one key fragment that was somehow large enough to have its own independent aura had followed the path of lowered resistance set up by the spell's energy and embedded itself within the weakly glimmering lifeform. Tendrils of light quickly began spreading through the new body, anchoring more firmly than they had in their previous host.
Loki paused the recording and shook his head. "Not a full-fledged magical entity, but something that could grow into one, I hope. This is going to take careful study and a team of experts pulling apart that scene to find the triggers, let alone the question of where that damage came from in the first place, but I finally have proof that non-magical life can be imbued with a spark."
The alien turned and briefly met the watery eyes of the clone, nodding in satisfaction. "You've done great work so far, but I'm afraid I want to deconstruct you sooner rather than later. No hard feelings? Good." It was a moment's work for Loki to vanish the magically scarred clone and temporarily store his pattern inside the teleport buffer as the computer started up the standard routine of disassembling the data of clones for proper integration with the lab's diagnostic systems and servers.
With a wistful sigh, Loki disintegrated the empty Asgardian crib. "All in all, time well spent. I believe I will actually fill out the right forms with the Lower Council on hosting a small non-sentient lifeform as a ship's pet – definitely one I can carry comfortably... Ah, well, on the whole I have to say that the human child was a great diversion and I'm grateful to him indirectly providing more keys to saving my people, but he was sadly disappointing as far as prophesied destined saviors go considering what happened with only his clone present. Unless another Dark Lord rises or that main mass of his shattered soul reintegrates itself... or finds a host..."
A deep and powerful grinding noise shuddered through the ship disrupting Loki's thoughts. Fearful that some sort of asteroid had evaded the proximity alarms, the Asgard raced to the main bridge of the ship, sparing only a quick glance at the readouts saying that Harry's clone had been properly processed and uploaded.
##
Once there, he stared in horror at the screens showing a gigantic jagged lighting bolt of a scar etching itself into the hull of his beautiful ship as if by an immense and invisible hand...
O.o.O
Author's Note
Happily accepting advice on weak spots and where this story should head. If the ship has magical potential, is it expressed in the limited form we saw in the Horcruxes or as a full-fledged wizard? If the ship counts as a Horcrux now, or at least its database, are there corrupting nightmarish elements involved, or are those only the result of a properly constructed ritual with the ship suffering no worse effects than Canon!Harry despite not being a living human?
If the ship develops an independent personality should it be more closely linked to Harry or Voldemort? I'm hoping for more of a light-hearted story where Loki winds up with an android lab assistant with a scarred forehead that slowly grows its own personality, but... there's a decent number of years to cover between the past and the present.
I'm a fan of the general idea of Voldemort's exploding brought up by Athey in Again and Again which portrays a strong alternative to the more common scenario of Voldemort being caught in a rebound from his own spell bouncing off Harry's forehead. What that means for this story (at the moment, although I may revise it later) is that because Voldemort sarcastically accepted Lily's final plea to take her life and spare her son, circumstances - her love, the protections she'd helped layer on the house, and the fractures he'd already driven deep into himself - forged the connection into a binding magical contract which he confirmed by killing Lily. His fractured soul then exploded in a frustrated effort to keep to the letter of the contract when he launched his attack on Harry, meaning that this version of Voldemort destroyed himself through his own actions and research failure.