Of Gods and Men

Harry Potter / Stargate

This was a plot bunny based around the idea of a Q-like Harry, somewhere in between ascended and not, who chooses to remain in the interim. Of course, having what amounts to some degree of divine might also comes with some repercussions. I wrote this months ago, came across it this week. It's post-HP, and taking place somewhere in the early SG-1 seasons, before they have any ships at all.

Harry's foot crunched down onto thickly-packed dust which covered the solid, off-grey rocks. The air could barely keep itself aloft, let alone carry the heavy particles of red rust that had made their way into every nook and cranny over many long ages. If there was a breeze, it failed to even ruffle the new arrival's hair; the wind was dead, like so many other things here.

In truth, this place had not seen a living visitor in an indescribably long time, and that fact could practically be felt; a certain impatience pervaded everything, a deep-seated tension that had eroded through millennia of hopeless silence, but persisted in diminished form. Now, cheap sneakers from a third-rate second-hand shop on a London street corner touched down lightly on that virgin soil, likely the first footwear that had ever done so.

"Well..." Harry said with a weary sigh. "I suppose if the Moon took a single bloody step…"

His breathing was slow and methodical even in the thin, oxygen-less atmosphere. He walked slowly along a deep crack in the surface, just as he had walked by the river Thames in downtown London, gazing skyward to a distant rust-red speck of light in the night sky. That had been mere moments before, in fact - brief moments that were at the same time very, very long.

Mars is bright tonight.

"Are you looking up, Firenze? You might see something interesting." Harry raised his hand, knowing that nobody could possibly see it back home, but there was no sense in being rude. Right over the horizon was a tiny, barely discernible pale blue dot. Planet Earth.

The once-wizard smiled to himself as he dropped his hand to his side again, his eyes wandering across the vast stretches of desert in every direction with a loner's appreciation. Deserts always had something interesting about them - the desolation and loneliness in subdued tones of brown and red made for a good place to think, a good place to wonder. Curiosity was the reason he had come to pay a visit, beyond his desire for isolation. Curiosity - and something else.

He had a plan.

Coming all the way out here was all too easy for someone to whom limits meant less than borders, someone who could step across the span between worlds with as much ease as others crossed the street. But mere possibility was hardly enough. He had seen this reddish dot featured on the evening news, the latest conquest of Muggle engineering, the border of their knowledge. Unlike so many wizards, those without magic pushed onward, and outward, to find their own miracles. That's why he had come - for that miracle.

Despite this great might, this impossible power at his fingertips, Harry had found that using it freely and whimsically was infinitely more fun than wielding it as a weapon of war, and this felt right. He had killed already, in a moment of unfiltered rage that he regretted - that instant had left a bad taste in his mouth, a sourness that refused to go away. Even here, fifty million miles from home, guilt followed him around like a dog nibbling at his ankles.

He had rationalized his decision in fifty different ways already, and many of those excuses were very good, but a certain shame persisted nevertheless. Voldemort was dead. Tom Riddle was gone - utterly gone. If there had been a soul left in the end, it was now no more than tatters. Harry had not enjoyed ending the monster's life, but he had not thought twice about it either.

He had walked to his death - because that's what was destined to happen, in a strange way. Dumbledore had known about it, had even greeted him in that strange place between, that other place he could barely remember. Then she had appeared. After he returned to life, he had slain Voldemort out of duty and rage more than any sort of deeper consideration. And when that wonderful and terrifying moment of clarity and power had faded, he was left standing over the corpse of his enemy, the Elder Wand clasped tightly in his hand as it burned to ash.

Harry knew that whoever she was, whatever she was, the woman he'd seen was disappointed with his actions. Harry agreed with her. He had not been ready.

It was no surprise, really, how the Wizarding World reacted - not if you kept track of how their news cycle tended to work. At first, a mixture of shock and horror pervaded everything, then relief and gratitude. Even at that time, however, the sense of wrongness that Harry himself felt was reflected in their eyes, and it took only a short time before suspicion and fear caught his former cheerleaders by the throat. It was not really the knowledge that Harry had ended Voldemort; that was expected of him. It was because he had done it so easily, so casually.

They recognized the potential danger, and couldn't help jerk back in shock.

Because killing was not supposed to be done without batting an eye, merciless and without the slightest hesitation, wielding neither a wand or a word against someone insurmountably more powerful. That was the way of dark lords, of wizards without restraint. He'd used it against someone who nobody would miss - but the threat still hung in the air, the weapon could not be withdrawn.

A year had passed since then, spent largely alone, and Harry scarcely involved himself in the daily life of the Wizarding World anymore. Ever more dire predictions loomed on the pages of the Daily Prophet, but his decision had been made already, his intent to leave only tempered by the few friendly connections he still had. In the end, he decided to leave everything behind in England.

He said his goodbyes to an inconsolable Ginny who still held out hope that he would return to her waiting arms, though that was an unlikely scenario. He visited Ron and Hermione too, and they seemed certain he would be back in a month or two. Out of all of his friends, Luna was the only one completely unfazed, and seemingly aware of what had changed. Her usually distant gaze was now the sharpest of all.

He had promised her that he would return - but not soon. And so he departed a place he could have ruled with an iron fist if he wished to, and found himself adrift in the world. The political foibles of wizards held no interest for him, now that he was no longer truly a member of that world, nor did he need any lessons in magic. He had no more duties. Doing whatever he felt like, ignoring all the rules, that was what could let him soar again. Without as much as a whimper, Harry Potter vanished from the public eye.

Anonymity worked for him. He'd wandered for many months in the world before he decided to see what the Muggles were doing, wishing desperately for a place he would be looked at with something other than unease, or distant fear. He was astonished by what he found among the people he'd shrugged off as irrelevant. Muggles were exemplified, in his mind, by the Dursleys and their ilk, hopelessly narrow-minded and obsessed with the silliest of things. But out in the world, there were adventurers still, far beyond what the Wizarding World would think possible.

There were stories of the unimaginable, of the impossible, in every place he looked. But strangely, of all the people that got his imagination soaring, it was those very Muggles that managed it best. Unaware of the wonders of magic and miracles, they had set out to undo their own limitations. The instant that Harry had left his own humanity behind, he found himself reconnecting with that part of himself which he had abandoned at age eleven, on a train station in downtown London.

He didn't understand much of the sciences, having never gone to a Muggle school beyond primary, but Harry couldn't help but be swept up by the enthusiasm that was almost palpable among symposiums and exhibitions of technology and exploration - there was something thrilling about seeing the wonders of magic replicated by people who seemed to care far more for their accomplishments than most any wizard would. In the Muggle world, a simple hover charm would still stop people mid-word, and they would stare in quiet awe - even if it took a machine of great size and complexity to accomplish such a feat. It was magnificent.

They didn't stop there, though. They looked further.

Much further.

And that is why, on a quiet Monday evening, Harry found himself on the planet Mars, with the intent to stir up trouble. He was not going to expose wizards, as they were welcome to their isolation - but then, since he was no longer subject to their laws, he had no reason to hide himself either. If the Muggles already looked skyward, tentatively reaching out with fumbling hands even when they knew their limitations, then what would it take to drive them further? What would allow them to grasp the universe? What better than a goal?

The red world was desolate and dead, and there were only the corpse-winds blowing over ancient sands. If there had ever been life, which was doubtful, it had been destroyed before there was a breath to take on planet Earth, before the sun itself had reined in its youthful temper. Harry could certainly not feel the tense and chaotic vibrancy that even the hottest, driest desert on Earth carried with it - the presence of a biosphere, as Hermione would describe it in a wistful tone.

But for all its terribly empty past, there was something special here, on this lonely world. A promise, perhaps, of a better future - and Harry was intent on fulfilling it. Already there was proof of life on this world, dotted across the surface few and far apart, but it had not come from locals. Perhaps that was the reason why the world felt so anxious under his feet; in so far as a planet could have a soul, it had been stirred by evidence of a distant intelligence, of something alien reaching out to touch it. Maybe the world beneath him desired the birth of its own Gaia, its own soul, with the arrival of visitors from its blue sibling.

That is why Harry had decided that this would be a turning point. He would place the juicy worm on this world, so that the fish might come to take a nibble. Here, so very far from home, he could make contact with the Muggles without any connection to the Wizarding World, challenging their ingenuity in exchange for wonders.

The gods of old tested man to judge his resolve - why wouldn't new ones?

"I think I just blasphemed quite enough," Harry muttered distantly as he smiled. "Time to get started with the next step, I suppose…"

He stepped towards a machine that sat a thousand miles from him - it took him no more than a single footfall to cross the distance. The device's plating had been corroded by years of dust storms, but the American flag was still vaguely visible on its side, partially bleached by radiation. It was flanked by the letters 'JPL'.

The flower-like structure of the spacecraft had a certain beauty to it, with each of its three solar panels gleaming a tiny bit in the afternoon sun, weak as it was here. Pathfinder was the structure's name, Harry remembered distantly, thinking of some remnant of a half-read paragraph in a book he'd picked up years ago.

A short distance away from the craft was a tiny little car, barely knee-height, covered entirely with another reflective solar panel, also covered in dust. From the top of it sprouted a small antenna, looking a little crooked.

"You'll serve just fine," Harry said amusedly, glancing up to the skies, his eyes catching up with a distant glint, impossibly far away. The Earth was as clear as day to his eyes. "If we're going to send a message to your makers, I'd better give you a little clean-up for the big day."

Waving a hand, calling upon magic without any sort of mediator, both of the Muggle devices lost their thick layers of dust in a swirl of energy, and the brilliant blue of their solar panels gleamed in the light again. It took mere moments for some tiny lights to blink on with a reluctant splutter.

Another wave, and wrecked joints began to repair themselves, torn wires tying together until parts started heating up - and a small satellite dish, rectangular, re-positioned itself neatly upright, chipped paint streaming back from the surroundings to fill in the gaps. At Harry's slight prodding, the device began transmitting a signal -nothing particularly meaningful or strong, but just enough to be picked up. The very fact that there was a signal would be a beacon in itself.

I am impossible. I am here.

This is where it would begin. If the Muggles took the bait, then there would be the hook in waiting. Something far more impossible than a mysteriously transmitting hunk of metal.

"So, little Sojourner," Harry muttered as he carefully nudged the little rover back towards its mothership. He wasn't sure why he was doing so - perhaps to give Pathfinder a little company in the desolation. He smiled as its little lights came on, flickering wildly. "Wonder how long the Muggles will take before they realize you're back? Before they figure out that they can aim that little camera of yours, and they'll find the impossible?"

"You're a proactive one, aren't you?" a voice asked. Harry didn't turn - he didn't need to, to know that voice. It was unmistakable - the same he had heard that other time, the moment he could not quite remember. But he knew enough not to feel frightened.

"So, you decided to come out of hiding at last?" he inquired mildly.

"I've been here for a few minutes already," the woman said lightly. "You were very caught up in your thoughts, it seems. Ambitious ones." She shook her head as she approached, and Harry studied her kind smile under luminous blond hair that seemed to shine with its own light. "I'm not going to stop you, you know. It's not like I could - you're a sort of grey area, all things considered. Not quite them, not quite us." She smiled. "Besides, you seem to have good intentions."

Harry frowned. "You know of my intentions?"

"Oh, yes," The woman laughed softly. "You told me all about them, you know. You were quite adamant that you would remember your decisions after you came back - and it seems that you were right about that. Humans - such an interesting people. And then there's you…"

"You speak as if I'm not human," Harry objected. "I might not be categorized neatly anymore - but I wouldn't go that far. Maybe if I give up on this face, it'd be different." He smiled lightly, then. "I don't really know what's going on - but I've got my suspicions. At first, I blamed the Hallows."

"Magical relics," she scoffed. "They're gone, now."

"Figured. After that, I thought I'd inherited Voldemort's power." Harry scratched the back of his head. "That took a while to shake off. It wasn't until later that I remembered bits and pieces of that other place. More than Dumbledore's visit, anyway. Your face…" He shook his head slowly. "I'm still not quite sure what did happen after that, but I'm pretty sure I screwed up..."

"Honestly, I'd half-expected you would," the woman murmured. "The man you fought - you were reminded of all the things he'd done to you, all at once. The murder of your family, his murders of innocents… Those memories were not tempered by reason. You couldn't help it."

"So I lashed out," Harry agreed, sighing. "And then I lost it all."

She raised an eyebrow.

"...Alright, except for this -" He gestured around the plains of Mars. "Yeah," he continued lamely. "Admittedly, that's a surprise. But it's gotten me quite a bit of grief, anyway."

"Wizards do have a bit of a sixth sense for this sort of thing." She sighed. "You broke the rules. The repercussions are not just legalistic, needless to say," she added lightly. "You took a life, quite forcefully. Destroyed it. In return, something of yours was taken. It might return, but there is no telling when. Ascension is not a gift freely given."

Harry swallowed thickly. "Ascension, huh?"

"It is what some of the people on Earth call it - we have our own words for it." She turned away to face the Sojourner, and smiled. "There's a few who know something back on your planet, you know. More than you think. Travellers, explorers, heroes. You know how brave people can be, I'm sure. I think you'll find that Earth won't respond as you expect them to. They know what's out there." She gestured to the stars. "They're terrified - but perhaps they're ready."

"So, what will they expect to see?" Harry cocked his head to the side, frowning. "If what you say is true - then my gesture here will be meaningless. If they already know, if they're already stepping outwards..."

"Only a few know, so far. There are many human beings across the galaxy - some with technology far in advance of the Earth's. Your form will not surprise them overly much." She smiled. "It would not be hard to pass yourself off as something else, should the need arise. To change form is not a new phenomenon, either." She nodded shortly. "You will not be stepping on any toes if you limit yourself to protecting your own people. Some would even glorify you for it. But you know what act you cannot commit again, going forward. The one sin that would see you dead."

"Murder," Harry said with a sigh. "I don't intend to do it again. I didn't really intend it the first time."

"Life is cruel, sometimes." The woman sighed, her luminous hair flowing as if through water as she moved. "This galaxy is not safe, fledgling. You should not act rashly. There is time, while the enemy is yet ignorant, to learn to love your people - and to prepare yourself and them for the inevitable war." Her sharp eyes blazed for a moment with some indescribable emotion, before she vanished into nothing, leaving him behind, alone.

Harry sighed forlornly. Here he was, an impossible creature on another world - a messenger, explorer, adventurer. A voluntary exile from Earth, out to expand humanity into the uncharted reaches. In many ways, he was a Pathfinder, too. And he could almost hear their voices already, from distant Earth, the people that he'd left behind and the ones that he reached out to.

In the wake of twilight, there was the twinkling as of a new star in the sky.

"All stations on MRO cord, MRO 8," a female voice announced at great speed. "At this time all antennas have locked up on 2-way or 3-way." There was a crackle, heard clearly over a dead-silent Mission Control. A few tense seconds later, the voice returned. "All stations on MRO cord, this is Nav MSA….We have 2-way Doppler and MRO is in orbit around the planet Mars!"

Cheers erupted throughout the room and in adjacent ones, and dozens of people came up from their chairs for impromptu hugs and handshakes. Soft murmurs kept coming through the radio, crackling status reports as the first data flowed in, but for the moment the victorious spirit overshadowed it all.

"We fucking did it," one engineer yelled from one of the side rooms, and nobody saw fit to correct his cursing as he punched the air, turning to his neighbor with a broad smile. "Sam, I told you we'd do it!" he continued. "D'you reckon I could get through to someone right now?"

"There's a press conference in a minute or two," the blond woman to his side said swiftly, shoving her headphones off her ears. "I swear, you're more likely to jump to the moon right now than getting to a working phone. Whoever you want to tell – they're probably already following the streams anyway." She smiled broadly. "Stick with it, Robin. We haven't gotten the first pictures yet, after all..."

"I suppose that's true," Robin grinned nervously as he glanced at his screen. "I guess it's a matter of time, though." He looked at her askance. "You know, with all that training you have, you might well end up on one of the next flights up to the actual moon... Now that's adventure!"

"That's a nice thought," Sam murmured, smiling warmly.

A short and balding man adjusted his tie as he stepped up the microphone, and his face appeared on every screen as he glanced amusedly to the enthusiastic JPL crowd as he cleared his throat, before looking straight to the press that had gathered before him.

"Everyone's asked me how come we were all so calm this morning," he began. "There's two easy answers to that. The first one is that last night a bunch of us got together and opened up fortune cookies. And my fortune, which I have right here, we had them laminated this morning, says 'a thrilling time is in your immediate future.'" He laughed. "That one certainly came true. And the second reason is our team we have a very professional, very dedicated team that's been working for five years to make today a reality."

"That's me," Robin whispered, sticking up his thumbs as he watched the screen, before noticing his neighbour peering at her laptop screen. "Sam – honestly, what can be so important that you're missing the press conference? Seriously?"

"First data," was all she said, and Robin blanched.

"What? Already?!"

Sam shrugged, her hands flying over her bulky keyboard as she shoved the laptop's screen aside. There, reams of numbers were visible. "It's self-checks mostly, but I'm getting a direct feed – if I'm lucky, I'll get the good stuff before anyone else finds it. Just wheeling past a few known coordinates to see if everything's working fine." She cracked a smile. "We both know what the press will get to hear – this is the interesting part!"

Robin stared. "Why aren't you working here, again?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "I have a job."

"After five months of aerobraking, we'll be able to do what we set out to do, in a low circular orbit just 190 miles above the surface of Mars. To see Mars in a way that we haven't been able to see it before," the spokesperson of JPL continued. "I'm very happy to report that at the current time, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is safe and stable with fully charged batteries, pointing at the Earth in full communication with us. We have good gyroscopes and a good star tracker and the flight teams in both Denver and here in Pasadena are working no issues whatsoever."

"We know all this," Robin said. "Come on. Get to the part about the aliens!"

Sam glanced over impatiently to Pat, who sat slumped behind his screen. "You know, if there are any microbes down there, it won't be the MRO that finds them. Maybe one of the rovers, if we're lucky, but the big one won't launch for years. Let's face it, we haven't really looked yet. Maybe someday, but not today." Her eyes betrayed her amusement, and she looked away. "Hell, maybe they'll fly up to us before we ever get a foot on Mars."

"Don't be silly." Robin groaned as he hung back in his chair. "I don't care that it's a long shot. I want to be involved in the mission that finds them. If that means getting involved in every friggin' astrobiology-related mission for decades, well, I wouldn't be the first." He ran a hand through his hair as he looked over the numbers that flashed across Sam's screen. "The Drake Equation, you know? I figured that if we find something on Mars, we're basically home free about the whole galaxy. If aliens exists here, even simple ones, then we're dealing with a lot of stuff out there."

"Really?" Sam said noncommittally. "We might find nothing, or we'll have to wait another century or more before we finally dig some up on the poles. Who knows?"

Robin smiled. "Ah, can you imagine being part of that mission, though?" he said dreamily. "I don't have the skills, of course, but you might make it – you're already stupidly qualified. Imagine that day. Samantha Carter, stepping out of the Martian equivalent of the Eagle, decked out in a spacesuit like ol' Armstrong. I can just imagine you skipping around under a diminished sun."

She snorted. "With this administration? I'd be eighty before they launch."

Robin looked suddenly affronted. "What? What about the Constellation program?"

Sam just looked impatient. "That won't make it past this president – if it survives that long. Not without a lot more commitment from Congress on a solid budget for NASA. Constellation is a great idea, but we thought the same about the Space Shuttle. Beautiful bird, but it can't even leave Low Earth Orbit, let alone do what we did in the sixties." Sam sighed, turning on her chair. "I'm just being realistic here."

"Call me a dreamer, then," Robin replied curtly. "Is that so terrible?"

"Eh. It's not that I don't dream," Sam responded dryly. "It's that my dreams tend to make sense."

"Hmpf. Have a little faith," Robin argued, and he raised his hand before Sam could react. "I know, I know, you're not religious and all that, I've heard it. But trust me, if nothing else. The puddle is getting too small, our cradle too tiny. We have to step out sometime. Why not sign up for astronaut training, and hope that fate favors you?"

"I like my current job," Sam said shortly. "You won't believe half the stuff I get to mess with, anyway..."

"Yeah, yeah. You and your air force nonsense," Robin muttered darkly. "Astrometrics, honestly?"

"Hey, it's cool. Don't be an ass, and I won't insult your spaceships!"

"After a six-month cruise, 300-million miles plus, we're finally there. It's a great feeling. I can't wait also for the scientists in a few months to be able to take control of the Orbiter and see what we find. They're going to be like a bunch of kids with a new microscope, I think, being able to look at things they haven't seen before. And I just can't wait to hear all the wows coming from the science community, it will be quite exciting."

"These are baby steps, I suppose," Sam said as she leaned back. "Aren't they being a bit cautious with the 'months'? I'm pretty sure the thing's fully functional..."

"That's classified - you're not even really supposed to be here," Robin said in annoyance. "I had to pull a few strings, you know? Anyway, the military gets first dibs, of course, though they only really get to pick what they want to see - the data's still going through us. It's just things that we can't publicize." He shrugged. "I suppose they want to make sure that there's nothing crazy before they allow the common folk to touch the toys."

"Hey - we know what we're doing," Sam said, affronted. "You forget that I'm military, you know?"

"We will move behind the planet Mars, and all our radio signals will stop. We won't be able to see the spacecraft for about half an hour."

"Hold on. Wait a minute..." Sam glanced back at her screen, at a little blinking dot that appeared momentarily, just before the blackout. "What did MRO just point at, right at the end? Three seconds before the blackout?"

"What? Did you see something off?" Robin wondered, leaning over. "What?"

"Hold on -" Her fingers brushed across her keyboard, her eyes peeled for the tiny fluctuation she'd noticed. The computer sluggishly responded to her command. "There - see it? That's a definite blip. No doubt about it, way too clear. And I'm pretty sure we're the first to see it. Everyone's still verifying the insertion..."

Robin leaned over, his eyes wide. "Fuck, really? I think I recognize those numbers, too..."

Sam smirked. "You should. Ares Vallis, 19°7′48″ North, 33°13′12″West. It's one of ours. One that you worked on, I think." She pursed her lips as she sighed. "Yeah. Those coordinates - that's the Pathfinder."

"But - that thing ran out of juice almost a decade ago," Robin protested instantly, shaking his head slowly. "Even if it had an RTG on board, which it didn't, it would have depleted by now! There's no way there could be a signal there. It has to be some coincidence. A fluke."

"Yeah? You really think so?" Sam asked, reaching into her pocket. "I need to make a call."

Robin stared. "You can't! You know how busy the lines are!"

She tapped her cellphone and smiled. "I think I'll make it through." Mere seconds passed, before someone answered. "Hello, General Hammond? Yes. Yes, this is Carter. Listen, I think we have a live one. Local. Very local." She glanced to her side. "I'm at the MRO conference, and - there's an anomalous signal coming from Mars. We're looking at possible first contact, sir. You'd better inform the President."

Robin's eyes were impossibly wide. "...F-First Contact?"

"Classified," Sam snapped. "Keep it to yourself. I need to go."

In the early morning sun, it seemed as if the pictures of Mars that dotted the computer screens gained a little more colour, a little more life.