Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or the Stargate franchise and am not making a profit off of this, nor am I planning to.

Chapter 2

Colorado Springs, Colorado
One week later

Hermione sighed and closed the door to her new flat. It would have been so much easier to just Apparate, she thought ruefully. As it was, she and the other three members of the newly commissioned team SG-19 had been flown in on a plane, meaning that she had spent several hours crammed into an uncomfortable seat. Since she hadn't been able to sleep, she had tried to read and had been annoyed when she finished her reading material halfway through. She had spent the rest of the flight fielding questions from the rest of the team about the wizarding world. A woman named Dr. Jennifer Malcolm, who was only three years older than she was, was the most enthusiastic of them.

She liked her team members just fine, but answering all those questions had gotten annoying fairly quickly. She hoped that they—meaning Jennifer, since Major Thomas Blair and Lieutenant Wilson Fletcher hadn't been asking her nearly as many questions—would get used to her quickly.

So now, here she was in Colorado, wanting nothing more than to flop down on her bed and sleep. Except that her bed was currently two mattresses that had been delivered while she had still been at the airport and it would be easier to adjust to the time change if she didn't sleep until it was actually night. Crookshanks meowed unhappily in his carrier. Harry had offered to watch him while she was away, but she had decided that she'd feel better with a familiar face around, even if it was just a cat.

"Sorry, Crookshanks. One second." With a flick of her wand (which had been hidden in a carry-on bag during the flight) she opened the trunk that his litter box was in and set it up. Her new teammates had been fascinated by the old-fashioned looking trunk that she had brought to Heathrow. Not just because it looked so odd, but because she had assured them that she had been able to pack all of her belongings in such a relatively small space.

"We wizards and witches definitely have the advantage there," she told Crookshanks, who was now gratefully stretching his legs. Enchanted trunks were just another reason she was glad to be a witch.

She was in the middle of unpacking—magically, of course—when she heard a knock at the door. "One moment," she called, tucking her wand away. She peered out and saw an unfamiliar blonde woman standing outside. "May I help you?" she asked through the door.

"Hermione Granger?"

"Yes?"

The woman smiled and flashed an ID card at the peephole. "Major Samantha Carter, United States Air Force." Hermione's mind flashed back to some of the reports that she had been reading over the past week and she recognized the name as that of a member of SG-1. "I live about a street over and thought I'd take you and your teammates out to dinner."

"That would be nice." She opened the door. "Please, come in. I've been unpacking and I probably look a mess."

"Sure." Major Carter stepped through and looked around. "Wow. Didn't you guys just get into town two hours ago?"

"What? Oh, yes. Why?" Hermione splashed some water on her face and dried it off, wondering what the Major meant by that.

"It's just that it looks like you're almost done unpacking."

"Oh! Um Yes. Well—"

She was saved having to make up some sort of excuse by Major Carter nodding with a wide-eyed look of wonder on her face and saying, "I guess it helps to have magic, doesn't it?"

"They've told you, then?"

"Yeah. Can't say I really believe too much in magic, though."

Hermione, always glad for a chance to show off, took out her wand. "Accio keys!" The keys, hung on a peg by the door, flew into her hand. She grinned at the surprised look she received. "I prefer doing wordless magic. It gives you an advantage if no one else knows what it is you're casting."

"Can I see that?" Major Carter asked, motioning at her wand. Hermione handed it over, somewhat pleased at the way that the older woman was looking at it like it was some sort of alien technology.

"It's vine wood with a dragon heartstring core."

"Dragon."

"Yes. They exist, you know." She tried sounding conversational. "A friend of mine works with them for a living."

Major Carter looked like she was struggling to find an answer when they heard a car horn honk. "That would be Dr. Malcolm. I picked her up before I came over here," she clarified.

"Oh goody." Major Carter gave her a questioning look as they headed for the door. "Jennifer's a very nice woman, but the constant questions about magic on the flight over got to be a bit much."

Dinner ended up being at a steak house twenty minutes away. "O'Malley's is closer, but... well, we're sorta banned from there. It's a long story." Major Carter—Sam, as she insisted on being called—had picked up another person on the way, a large imposing looking man who reminded Hermione more than a bit of Kingsley Shacklebolt without the earring and with a hat pulled low on his forehead. He introduced himself as Teal'c and she was absolutely giddy to realize that he was the Jaffa that she had read about in a report. She and Jennifer had peppered him with questions about his species and homeworld, which he answered patiently.

"I'm very sorry if we're bothering you, but I've never met a non-human who wasn't from Earth," she told him, remembering how annoyed she had been when Jennifer had done the same to her on the plane.

"And I've never met a non-human at all!" Jennifer said, almost bouncing with excitement.

Teal'c had smiled graciously and nodded. "No offense is taken."

At the steakhouse, they met up with an older-looking man in a leather jacket who introduced himself as Colonel Jack O'Neill. He had brought Major Blair and Lieutenant Fletcher, the latter of whom was yawning.

"I thought Daniel was coming."

"His leg was bothering him and he decided to stay home. Fourth guy in SG-1," Colonel O'Neill clarified to Hermione and the rest. "Had a bit of a bad time in Honduras recently."

The meal itself was nice and quiet. Any mention of aliens, other planets, or magic was avoided. Instead, they talked about sports (which Hermione stayed out of, only being familiar with Quidditch), movies (she was extremely amused to hear Teal'c praising some science fiction movies that she had watched with a cousin as a little girl), and very briefly, the current news stories of the week. All in all, it was a nice evening.

Harry and Ron would like these people, she thought, suddenly feeling homesick.

On the ride home, discussion changed back to topics that weren't safe to discuss in public. "What exactly did you do back in London?" Sam asked.

"I worked in the Ministry of Magic as a department head. I was able to use my name and a friend's influence to get them to reclassify centaurs, werewolves, goblins, giants, vampires, and house elves as 'magical beings' instead of 'magical creatures' and was put in charge of interacting with them."

Jennifer, who had already heard this on the flight over, wasn't surprised. Teal'c simply nodded. Sam, who was familiar with creatures that she probably thought of as mythical, definitely seemed impressed. "Werewolves?" she asked.

"Yes. They're not the monsters that they're made out to be, you know. It's a disease that they don't have any control over. And since my department has started lobbying for them, more of them are able to take the Wolfsbane potion than ever and attacks are down almost seventy percent." Noting the confused looks of the other people, she clarified. "It's a potion that allows them to become just a harmless wolf on a full moon. It suppresses the urge to harm others and themselves."

"You appear to be very young to have such responsibility," Teal'c commented.

Hermione grinned proudly. "After all my friends and I have done for them, they couldn't just shut us up."

"That would be that Harry Potter kid you talked about?" asked Jennifer.

"Along with many others, yes. The Ministry felt like it owed us, and I saw the opportunity to enact change."

Teal'c nodded appreciatively. Sam looked curious. "What happened to give you so much influence over policy? If you don't mind me asking, that is."

"There was a war," Hermione stated simply. It would take too long to tell the full story, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to keep her composure right now. She hoped they'd leave it at that.

They did. When Sam dropped Teal'c off at Cheyenne Mountain, they were discussing some previous mission, and when Hermione was dropped off, they were just silent.