I'm the one who decides, not you.

"It's complicated." Lily told him.

"Well, as you can see," he gestured toward the cast on his leg, "I'm not going anywhere. And you aren't going to get anything from me until I'm satisfied that you aren't going to be causing that young man any more pain."

"Who are you to dictate terms to us?" James Potter demanded. "He's our son and we have the right to see him and bring him home."

"You have no rights Mr. Potter." Daniel countered. "You gave up those rights when you abandoned your son. Also, if I remember correctly Harry Potter must be at least twenty years old now, right?"

"Twenty-one," Lily murmured, but Daniel heard her.

"Twenty-one then, that makes him a legal adult in any country you would care to name. It is his rights that matter now, not yours." Daniel looked James Potter in the eye. "That means he has the right to decide what he wants to do and I'd say he's already made that choice, seeing as how he is here and not in the reality where he was born. After all, he left your reality of his own volition. No one held a gun to his head, so there must have been something there that drove him away. Making a trip through any kind of portal to an alternate reality is dangerous, whether it is one created by technology or magic. You risk entropic cascade failure, especially if the you in this reality is still alive."

"What is en… entro…"

"Entropic cascade failure?" Sam put in when James seemed to be having trouble finishing the word.

James nodded.

"In simplest terms, two of the same person can not exist in the same reality at the same time." Sam told them. "If the James Potter that really did belong in this universe were still alive, then this universe would begin rejecting you about 48 hours after your arrival here, because you don't belong. It's similar in a way to what sometimes used to happen with donated organs. If the donor organ wasn't an exact or close enough match to the removed one, then the body would reject it and try to destroy it because it didn't belong. We've seen it happen and it's not a pleasant experience to go through."

"Dr. Jackson," Lily spoke up again. "We just want to see him. Talk with him and try and convince him to come home."

"And what would you say to him, Mrs. Potter, about why you abandoned him?" Daniel repeated his earlier question. "How would you explain your choices that left him living with people who hated the fact he existed in the first place?" He took a deep breath, trying to get his temper under control. He couldn't let them suspect who he really was, or he'd never get rid of them. "I'm the one you have to convince first, Mrs. Potter. Because I think I can say with certainty that if my parents showed up today and told me they'd been alive for the last 30 years, after I saw them die right in front of me when I was seven and knowing that they'd abandoned me, I'd tell them to go to hell and take the shortest route to get there. You see as far as I'm concerned they would be telling me that whatever they had to do or were hiding from was more important than me and that I didn't matter one damn bit to them. Looking at them standing there expecting me to forgive forget, because we were going to be a family again, would probably make me go postal."

"Daniel?" Jack couldn't understand why his friend was so angry with these people who just wanted to find their son. He knew that if Charlie were still alive and had gone missing, he would turn the world over and shake it trying to find him.

"Think about it, Jack." Daniel knew what he was asking with, saying his name that way. "If you and Sarah had left Charlie," he held up his hand. "I know you wouldn't, but just for the sake of argument, say you and Sarah left Charlie alone, but did it in such a way that he believed you were dead and then he was raised by people who loathed you and hated the fact that he even existed. Now take it forward to where Charlie is an adult, and you suddenly reappeared expecting everything would go back to where you were all one big happy family. Would you really be surprised if Charlie wanted nothing to do with you and Sarah?"

Jack gave the scenario that had been laid out by Daniel serious consideration and had to finally admit. "No, I wouldn't be surprised, but I would hope that, one day we might manage to at least be friends, if not family again."

"Exactly," Daniel agreed. "And since the younger Mr. Potter is not here and I am the one who has the information they want, I'm the one who gets to decide whether they deserve to have it or not."

Daniel returned his attention to the Potters, who were now looking somewhat worried. He wondered if it was because of what he'd said about how their son might react toward them, or at the thought that he might not tell them what they wanted to know. "Now for the third time, why did you abandon your son, Mrs. Potter?"

"How much did our son tell you about where he came from?" Lily wanted to know.

"Nothing," Daniel replied. "I didn't even know he was from an alternate reality until now. All we did discuss of his childhood, was that his parents like mine had been killed, only he lost his while he was still a baby. He was raised by an Aunt and Uncle who hated the very ground he stood on and if they could have figured out a legal way to get rid of him, they probably would have in a heartbeat. He also told me he came into his trust fund that year and was going to do some traveling. See places he'd only read about. Now it is your turn, ma'am."

"To understand what happened, you will need a little history first." Lily told him. "About forty maybe fifty years ago is when it all started. A young wizard named Tom Riddle, who was a very powerful wizard, went dark or I suppose you would say he started using his power for evil. He was the heir of an ancient wizarding bloodline that was descended from a man who was obsessed with keeping the magical race pure. To most in the wizarding world, the four main groups of people are broken down like this; pure bloods, half-bloods, muggle-born, and muggles. A Muggle is a person with no magical ability at all. Half-bloods are those with one magical parent and one muggle parent. A muggle-born is a person with magical ability who is born into a muggle family. Pure bloods are those whose lineage is only made up of those with magical ability, going back at least several hundred years if not more. Anyway, after he graduated from Hogwarts, that's a school where young wizard and witches go to learn to use magic, he changed his name to Voldemort."

Daniel wasn't surprised at the pause, but he noticed she didn't flinch or have trouble saying Riddle's other name. A moment later she continued. "Voldemort had started gathering followers mostly from among the purebloods, while he was still in school. He convinced them he could give them more power and that they would no longer have to hide in the shadows. He also convinced them he had the same goal as they did, purifying the wizarding world by getting rid of the muggle-borns and half-bloods."

"Shades of Adolph Hitler," Jack commented.

"Tom Riddle as Voldemort was originally know did grow up during the era of Hitler and WWII, so it is possible that he got some of his racist ideas from the man and combined them with his loathing for the muggles who had mistreated him while he was growing up in an orphanage." Lily agreed, before continuing with her history lesson. "Voldemort kept on gaining power and sowing fear. It reached the point where people were afraid to say his name and referred to him as You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, among others."

She shook her head at the foolishness of those in the wizarding world. They were still afraid to said Voldemort's name, as if saying it would make him reappear from beyond the grave. "Anyway, shortly before Harry was born, a seer made a prophecy that foretold of a child being born as the seventh month ended who would have the power to defeat Voldemort. This child was to be born to parents who had deified the Dark Lord three times. The prophecy also said the child would be marked as Voldemort's equal, but that he would have a power the Dark Lord didn't know about. There were only two children who were born at the end of July who met the criteria of having parents who had defied Voldemort three times: a boy named Neville Longbottom and our son Harry. Originally it was thought that only Dumbledore knew about the prophecy, but one of Voldemort's agents heard at least part of it, enough to tell the Dark lord which children needed to be dealt with. It finally became clear our son was the one spoken of by the prophecy, when Voldemort tried to kill Harry and failed, leaving him with a curse scar in the shape of a lightening bolt."

"As fascinating as I'm sure this little history lesson is, you still haven't answered Daniel's question." Jack put in.

Daniel had to look down for a moment to hide the smirk that had appeared on his face at Jack's totally predictable interruption. His friend had no patience for long winded explanations. He always wanted to get to the heart of the matter in the shortest possible time, without all the history that led up to the situation in the first place.

Lily just glared at the man and that made Daniel have to choke back a laugh.

"I was just getting to that," Lily said primly, in a manner that reminded Daniel of McGonagall when she was offended by something. "Dumbledore is the Headmaster of Hogwarts as well as the leader of the Order of Phoenix, a group that was dedicated to stopping Voldemort. Through various sources, he learned of Voldemort's plans to kill us; James, Harry and I," she added for clarification. "We knew that Voldemort had a spy in the Order and we were discussing our plans to go into hiding using the Fidelius Charm to protect our location, when Dumbledore told us about the prophecy and of Harry's possible role in it."

Lily looked at her husband and he took up the tale. "We were going to have to go into hiding no matter what, but what we had to decide was, would it be right of us to deny the wizarding world a chance to be free of Voldemort by taking Harry with us, if he was indeed the child who was meant to defeat Voldemort. Dumbledore finally convinced us that it would be better for all of us, if we went into hiding without Harry and he assured us that if Harry wasn't the one spoken of in the prophecy, he would see to it that Harry was sent to us. If Harry was the one spoken of in the prophecy, he assured us that he would watch over Harry and make sure he was happy and that once Voldemort was finally defeated, we would be reunited."

"Did it not occur to you, that if your son were indeed the one spoken of in the prophecy, that he would have defeated this Voldemort person whether he remained with you or not?" Teal'c asked, before Daniel could.

From the expressions on the Potter's faces, that thought had occurred to them and James finally confirmed it. "Yes, it did. But a lot more people might have died before that happened and we felt, we didn't have the right to place the rest of the wizarding world in additional peril, because we wanted to keep our son with us. We thought if anything happened to the doubles, we had created to take our place, that Harry would be living with Sirius...."

"So in essence," Daniel cut in, "you placed the welfare of others above that of your infant son. Would that be a correct assessment to make?"

"We love our son!" Lily countered hotly.

"Not enough, apparently," Jack muttered.

"Did you and your husband have any other children, Mrs. Potter?" Daniel asked.

"No," Lily looked confused by the question. "We tried, but it just never happened."

"So that means that you never got to see your only child grow up, go to school, play sports with him, celebrate birthdays, or do any of the other normal things that parents get to see and do." Daniel met her eyes calmly. None of the rage he was feeling was showing on his face. "You basically threw the precious gift of your child back in the face of whatever higher power gave him to you when you left him in the hands of this Dumbledore person. Who apparently took your son and left him with relatives who loathed him." He paused for a moment. "My wife and I never got to have a child, Mrs. Potter, but if we had, I would never have left him without a damn good reason, and I damn well wouldn't have left him with people who hated me. You weren't thinking of your child! You were thinking of yourselves! By your own words, you chose to put the fate of a world on a pair of infant shoulders that should not have had to bear that burden and then you deserted him, instead of helping him learn to deal with it."

Daniel took several deep breaths before continuing, "The Harry Potter I met in Chicago, was a very angry young man. He had been betrayed by those closest to him; friends and those he considered family, shortly before he left home. Did you give any thought at all to how your son might feel about you suddenly showing up in his life? I mean I know from what he told me, that for the first ten years that Harry lived with his Aunt and Uncle, he was told you died in a car crash and that you, Mr. Potter were the one responsible for killing yourself and your wife because you were driving drunk. Have either of you considered how your son is going to react, if you suddenly show up on his doorstep and say, 'Hi son, we're your parents. We didn't really die, it was all an elaborate hoax.' or words to that effect. Did you expect him to pretend the last eighteen or twenty years had never happened? To want to get to know you?"

Sam could tell from the expressions on their faces that the Potters had never even given that a moment's consideration. Apparently they had expected their son would be so glad to see them alive he would just ignore what they'd done. While her own family had been far from perfect, especially with her father being in the military and away a lot, she had always had that foundation to build on and their love to fall back on. It sounded as if the young man, Daniel seemed to have gotten to know very well in a few hours, hadn't had that foundation and she felt sorry for him because of it.

Daniel asked another question before they'd had a chance to answer the last ones. "Jack told me that you intend to try and take your son back. Is that correct?"

"He doesn't belong here." James told him. "He belongs at home among his family and friends."

"From what he told me, it doesn't sound like he had either one back where he came from." Daniel countered.

"How did you get to know our son so well, Dr. Jackson?" Lily asked. "Dumbledore told us he was always a very private person, keeping things bottled up inside."

"Daniel has always had a knack for getting things out of people." Jack told them proudly. "He's gotten quite a few people to open up, who you would have thought were silent as the grave. He also hates to see people in pain, any kind of pain."

"Mr. and Mrs. Potter," Daniel looked very serious now. "If you do find your son and he tells you to go to hell and that he has no intention of coming back with you, what are you going to do? Will you use some magic spell to force him to comply with your wishes?"

Lily and James looked at each other aghast at the idea of using the Imperious Curse on their son then Lily cried. "NO! We would never use magic to compel our son to do what he didn't want to do."

"But you didn't rule out other means of trying to persuade him." Jack observed.

"Harry doesn't belong in your world," James repeated.

"He doesn't appear to belong in yours either, since he chose to leave it " Sam observed. "Taking a portal to another world and not knowing if what lies on the other side of it, is better or worse than what you left, implies that it was preferable to take the risk than remain where he was."

"There were some problems back home," Lily admitted, "but they've been taken care of. The people of the wizarding world just want him to come home. They have been waiting a long time to honor their hero."

"Hero's welcomes are overrated." Jack groused, having been on the receiving end of a number of them since starting to work for the SGC. The only welcomes he truly enjoyed, were those that came from the other members of the SGC, because they understood the dangers they faced and what was going on.

"Please, Dr. Jackson, we just want to find our son." Lily looked at the linguist an expression of longing on her face. "We haven't seen him for over twenty years."

"And whose fault is that?" Daniel inquired, causing her face to fall. "I have one more question for you?"

"What?" James demanded

"Is there a magically binding oath, that I can make you take?" Daniel already knew the answer but he wanted to see what they had to say.

"There are a couple of them." Lily told him.

"Why do you want to know?" James asked.

"Because I want you both to swear a magically binding oath, that if you do find your son, you will not use any kind of force or trickery to force him to go back to your world." Daniel told them. "It must be his choice and only his choice to go back."

(AN: While this isn't quite how I wanted it to come out, I had to tread a fine line to keep too much vitriol out of Daniel/Harry's speech, otherwise someone might have figured out who he was too soon. I'll probably revise it later.)

(AN: Answers to questions asked in the reviews can be found in the Loprogue. Usually after the next update.)