I'm a Wizard, Jack

SGC 5:00pm

"Unscheduled off-world activation," Airman Harris called as the alarm began sounding

SF soldiers raced into the Gate room, weapons at the ready, as General Hammond came into the control room. The iris, protecting the stargate, was closed.

"Receiving ID signal, sir." Harris told the general. "It's SG-1, sir."

"Open the iris," Hammond ordered, surprised that they were returning early.

They must've run into trouble... again. Because knowing Dr. Jackson as well as he did, Hammond had expected to see O'Neill dragging the younger man back through the gate by the scruff of his neck.

The SF soldiers prepared themselves, in case SG-1 followed their usual habit and brought back unwanted guests.

A few moments later, Daniel and Sam came through the gate at a run and collapsed at the bottom of the ramp. O'Neill and Teal'c were close on their heels.

As he was coming down the ramp, O'Neill shouted, "Close the Iris!"

Once he heard the iris close with a clang, Jack sank to his knees by his teammates, breathing heavily. Hammond joined them in the gateroom a few minutes later as they were getting back to their feet. There were a couple of thuds a moment later, followed by the gate disengaging.

"Colonel O'Neill, what happened?" Hammond wanted to know. "You weren't expected back for another hour."

"Some of Osiris' goons decided to crash our party earlier today." Jack avoided looking at Daniel, keeping his face expressionless. "We've spent the last couple of hours trying to avoid them as we made our way to the gate. Had a bit of a firefight at the gate." Jack hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the gate, "And as you heard a couple of the party crashers decided to try and join us here."

After looking the team over and seeing no immediate injuries and knowing that the post-mission checkup would take a couple of hours, Hammond told them, "We'll debrief tomorrow morning. After your check-ups, consider yourselves off-duty til tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, sir." Jack started herding the rest of his team toward the infirmary. The sooner they got the check-ups out of the way, the sooner he and the others could start grilling Daniel. That young man had some serious explaining to do.

O'Neill had no idea how long he had been able to do stuff like they'd seen on Osiris' ship. Had he learned it on Kheb, or was it something Shifu had taught him when he visited Earth and knocked Daniel out? The boy had said he was teaching Daniel, but what had the linguist been taught? O'Neill knew that the NID would've loved to get their hands on Daniel, if they had known he could wield this kind of power, but surely he could have told them about this ability he'd acquired. Or, another thought occurred to Jack as he remembered the visit of the Potters a couple of months ago, did Daniel have the ability to do magic? If so, then the only one who could have taught him how to use it would have been the Potter's son which meant that Daniel had lied to the Potters. He did know where their son was.

Janet studied SG-1 intently. Something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. All four members of SG-1 seemed to behaving normally, so why did she have a feeling something more had happened on P6X547 than they were letting on. After running every test twice and double checking each set of results, and finding nothing wrong, she could she could only assume that it was something to do with the team itself. She couldn't help wondering what could have happened on a mission that was supposed to help Daniel get himself back together.

"Let's get some Chinese and head to my place." Jack said as they left the infirmary.

"Better go to mine, Jack," she heard Daniel disagree before they got out of earshot.

Sighing Janet hoped that whatever it was, they worked it out before the SG-1 was torn apart. Whether the rest of the world knew it or not, SG-1 was needed to keep the world safe.

They had finished dinner. Empty containers of chinese takeout, lay scattered on the living room table. It had been a largely silent meal, not like their usual get together's. Daniel knew the others wanted it over quickly so they could get to the questions that were bursting to get out. Jack had almost asked a couple of them while in the infirmary, and he knew it had been a look from Sam that silenced the older man both times. For Jack that was showing remarkable patience, but he knew it wouldn't last much longer.

"All right, Daniel," It was Jack who spoke first no surprise there.

"Just wait a couple of minutes, Jack," he requested, before the older man could say anything. He cast a quick wandless silencing charm, as well as something to block any electronic bugs that might be around.

"You can go ahead now, Jack," he told O'Neill. "I just had to make sure no one could overhear this conversation."

"How did you do that?" Sam spoke up before Jack could. "How did you yank me out of Osiris' hands?"

"More importantly," Jack added, having taken a few deep breaths to calm himself. "How did you reduce a Goa'uld to a pile of ash, in less than five seconds? And why didn't you let us know you could do this before?"

Jack watched as Daniel got up a retrieved the puzzle box, he always kept next to Sha're's picture. He knew it was one of Daniel's most prized possessions. The one time he'd asked about it, Daniel had told him that he'd gotten it when he was eleven and with it the first friend he'd had since his parents had died.

As Daniel turned the puzzle box over in his hand, he told them, "I need to you to listen to this all the way through, before you ask any questions. It's a rather long and involved tale and I'd rather not get side tracked along the way."

At the nods from the other three, Daniel took a deep breath and began, "My name is Harry Potter, and I was born July 31, 1980, and spent the first year of my life in a place called Godric's Hollow. On October 31, 1981, or so I was told, much later, a wizard named Tom Riddle, who was going by the name of Lord Voldemort by then, killed my parents and then tried but failed to kill me..."

As Daniel laid out the story of his life as Harry Potter, he placed the puzzle box on the floor and gestured at it with his hand. It slowly grew larger and changed to resemble a travelers trunk. He didn't go into a whole lot of detail, not wanting to have to dredge up a life he'd thought buried to him at least thirty years ago. There were also some events he really didn't want to think about, like Sirius' death.

Once he was finished, O'Neill asked the first question, his expression serious. "Where is the real Daniel Jackson?"

The young man before him, and he didn't whether to think of him as Daniel or Harry, was silent for a moment, before saying, "To all intents and purposes, I am the real Daniel Jackson, and have been for almost thirty years, but if you mean the son of Claire and Melbourne Jackson, he's dead."

"So you stole someone's identity," Jack accused.

"Stole is the wrong word, it implies he was still using it. The real Daniel Jackson died in 1973 at the age of seven." He paused a moment, before softly adding. "He was at the back of the tomb display, examining the hieroglyphs on the walls and no one saw him there. He was crushed under a column when the roof came down."

Sam spoke up before anyone else could. "You say you've been Daniel Jackson for almost thirty years, how is that possible? According to your parents, you only arrived here three years ago."

"They're not my parents," Daniel disagreed, then held up his hand to stop the obvious counter-argument. "Yes, I know Lily Potter gave birth to me, but except for the first year of my life, they weren't there. They did none of the things that go into raising a child. The way I look at it, my parents died on Halloween in 1981, just like everyone always told me. I don't know the Potters and I don't want to know them."

There was a pause as Daniel, at least for the moment, Jack decided to think of him as Daniel, it was less confusing that way, rummaged around in the trunk and pulled a thin stick that looked like one of the wands the Potters had carried. "You wanted to know how I could have been Daniel Jackson for over thirty years, when to the Potters, I've only been here three, it's quite simple, I used magic. Before I even stepped through the portal from my home reality, I had decided that I was going to have a new life here, one not as Harry Potter. I was fairly confident that no one would be able to follow me from the reality I had left, at least not right away. I had hoped that no one would be stupid enough to follow me but I wasn't going to count on that, knowing Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic like I do.. They all thought they had the right to decide what my life should be and how I should live it. I knew if they got me back, I would be used by them to get what they wanted out of the wizarding community. I never suspected that Dumbledore would send the Potters."

"What makes you so sure this Dumbledore person sent them?" Jack questioned. "Maybe they came on their own. From the impression I got of them, they really wanted to find you."

"And bring me back," Daniel added. "While they may have wanted to find me, lord only knows why, given that they left me to essentially fend for myself for twenty years, but the bring me back part has Dumbledore written all over it. He's a master manipulator. His philosophy is; 'get people to do what I want them to do because I know what's best for them and to hell with what they may want!'"

"Is that why you didn't tell them who you are?" Teal'c asked.

"Partly, because if they'd known who I really was, the Potters would have done their damndest to bring me back to that world, even though I never want to go back." he agreed. "I also didn't want them hanging around, trying to make up for twenty years that can never be gotten back or made up for. They left me, whether it was because of Dumbledore's manipulations or not, they chose to abandon me! Because of their actions, I was treated as a slave and a leper, while I lived with the Dursleys, and my godfather was left to rot in the wizard prison of Azkaban. The Goa'uld have no idea what Hell is. They should try having to stay in a prison guarded by dementors. As far as I'm concerned, the Potters can never make up for any of that."

"Why and how did you become Daniel?" Sam saw that this topic was painful for Daniel/Harry and decided to change the subject slightly.

Relieved by the change of subject, Daniel told her. "Shortly after I got here, I started researching past obituary's, looking for someone to become, because even in my home reality, you can't simply create an identity out of thin air. I chose to become a child again, so I could get to know my new home. I was looking for a boy who would have no close kin so I wouldn't have to worry about having to cover up any mistakes I might make as I got used to my new life and one who was essentially a stranger in whatever country I was going to be living in."

"But what about Nick?" Jack interrupted. "He was Daniel Jackson's grandfather. You couldn't known that he wouldn't take Daniel in."

Daniel smiled a sad smile. "Ah, but you see the first time around, Nick died a short time after his daughter and her family did. I guess the first time around he had no reason to live with his remaining family dead. The fact that his grandson survived, was apparently enough to keep him alive the second time around, even though he didn't take me in."

"First time around?" Sam pounced on those words.

Daniel nodded. "Among the spells I brought with me, Sam, was a very old spell that allows a person to travel back to a specific point in time, but not go forward."

"So you knew time travel was possible." Sam accused remembering the surprise he showed when they had gone back to 1969.

"I've known it was possible to travel back in time by magical means, since I was thirteen in my home reality, but I didn't know it was possible through technology." Daniel told her. "Even wizards and witches don't do it lightly though and normally they can only go back a few hours or maybe days. Their most important rule is; 'to not be seen'."

"I think we're wandering off topic here, kids." Jack spoke up quickly before their conversation could wander off into techno-babble where he was lucky if he understood every tenth word. "Why choose Daniel Jackson? Why go back in time that far to create this new identity for yourself? Why couldn't you have done it in a little closer to when you actually arrived?"

Daniel looked thoughtful. "There were a number of reasons. I wanted to make it harder for anyone to track me, if Dumbledore did managed to con someone into coming after me. But the main reason besides him being new to America was be cause his parents were archeologists and it had been noted in the article about them that Daniel had a gift with languages and had wanted to be an archeologist like his parents. One of my 'former' friends back where I came from had a brother who was a curse breaker. I used to love to listen to his stories about Egypt and other exotic places he visited. I wanted to do something similar and so I chose to become Daniel Jackson."

"You mean when you stole his identity." Jack put in again.

"He wasn't going to be using it any more, Jack." Daniel pointed out again. "And as weird as it may sound, Jack, I think my becoming Daniel Jackson was a part of what was supposed to happen, at least in this reality. I mean out of all the kids who died accidentally, that fit the criteria I had decided on before ever stepping through the portal, he was the one I selected. And it seems as though the alternate realities we have heard about where there was no Daniel Jackson at the SGC, Apophis was able to invade the Earth and take over. Maybe I was meant to come here once Voldemort was defeated. Maybe I was meant to take Catherine up on her offer. I think the only reason that I could see what other archeologists couldn't about Ancient Egyptian is because I'm a parselmouth."

"Come again?" That term made absolutely no sense to Jack.

"It means I can talk to snake and understand what they're saying." Daniel told him. "When you come right down to it, that's all a Goa'uld is anyway, an ugly parasitic snake. Ancient Egyptian evolved from the Goa'uld language, or else the Goa'uld stole it from them, but there are very subtle differences between Ancient Egyptian and Goa'uld."

"Why did you wait until now to show us what you could do?" Jack asked. "I mean it would've been nice to know that we had someone who could turn a Goa'uld into a crispy critter."

"I didn't want anyone to know," Daniel told him, "and if the situation hadn't been so desperate, you wouldn't know now."

"Why?" Teal'c asked. "Do you not trust us, DanielJackson?"

"Of course I trust you." Daniel was quick to assure them, "It's the people we have to deal with outside the SGC that I don't trust. If the NID found out what I could do, how long do you think it would be before I suddenly disappeared and would up in a hidden lab somewhere? As long as the Wiccans don't appear to have any real magical ability, they are left alone, but they ever showed any signs of real power, you know the government would have them put away somewhere so they could control that power. I also wanted to avoid becoming more of a target for the Goa'ulds than I already am. If they knew that I had these powers, I would go right to the top of their list as the most desired Tau'ri to have as a host. And I'd probably move to the top of the Tok'ra one as well, even if they don't take unwilling hosts."

"Well, that still doesn't explain why you never told us." Sam looked a little hurt.

"Sam, let me ask you something," Daniel looked at her his expression serious. "If you were to put what I did today in a report, how would you explain to the General and from there to the Joint Chiefs?

"I... I," Sam tried to come up with an answer, but couldn't really think of any that would explain a Goa'uld turned into a pile of ash in less than a minute.

Daniel continued "I mean even if you danced around the topic, sooner or later the General would figure out something was going on and then both of you would have been labeled a security risk. And once the General knew he would bar me from gate travel, because he couldn't afford to put a one of a kind weapon at risk."

"You are not a weapon, DanielJackson." Teal'c was quick to say.

"My ability to do magic could be considered that way, Teal'c." Daniel countered. "it's not the first time I've been considered a weapon. That's what Dumbledore saw me as. A weapon he molded and aimed at Voldemort. Magic can do a lot of things, but there's a lot it can't do. The thing is the destructive things I can do with it, would make me a very desirable prize for anyone."

His team mates were silent.

Daniel added one final comment. "I don't want to leave the SGC. I've spent my whole life looking for a place to belong. First in my own reality, then in the academic world. I thought I found it with Sha're, but that was taken away. I don't want to lose you and the SGC as well. I'm making a difference here and I don't want it to stop. I'm asking you not to tell the General or anybody else about who I used to be or what I can do."

"That's asking an awful lot, Daniel." Jack told him after a few more minutes silence.

"I know," was all Daniel said.

(AN: This chapter didn't quite come out the way I wanted it to, so it will probably be revised again later, but I hope you enjoy it. There's only one more chapter to go.)

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