Author's note: People have been leaving predictions of the plot in their reviews, and all I can say is that some of you are right. I hope these next few chapters won't loose me too many readers.(evil grin) Don't forget to review!
Crumpets Aren't My Style
By Marz
Good Kitty
Her hair was standing on end long before the first fireball struck the camp. From the branches of a towering tree she'd seen the five cargo ships land in a clearing a few miles from the tents. The Jaffa had intended to retrieve more of them. The ship they left in had not returned yet either. Tail lashing in agitation, she sped down into the jungle below, running full tilt for the landing site. Other Jaffa from the camp ran on either side of her, in a hurry to greet their conquering companions. Their enthusiasm probably wouldn't be dampened, even if half the raiding party had been on the missing ships, blown into cinders on some distant world, and Harry with them. If he was alright she fully intended to sink her claws as far as they would go into that fool boy's backside for worrying her this much.
The doors of the ships hung open. A large number of Jaffa were assembled beside them. Bre'tac stood with them, talking solemnly. Harry wasn't there. She sniffed, but nothing earthly hung in the air. Harry had not come back with them.
"-would not listen. He left his post and went into the city," said Joe'mec, the man who was in charge of the younger warriors.
"Do you have any idea why?" asked Bre'tac.
"Morrigan's Jaffa had retreated into the city and Ba'al's Jaffa followed. The humans caught between them were being slaughtered. The boy apparently thought he could help them. He disappeared from his lookout post. We lost track of him for a time, but a half hour later he was sighted defending a group of humans fleeing the city. The Jaffa guarding the cargo ships were called off to help pursue the boy, and we took the opportunity to seize them. Ro'dan saw the boy, unconscious, being carried away by Ba'al's Jaffa, but there was no hope of rescue. The boy was taken to Ba'al's command ship. It has been seventeen hours since his capture."
"And you left without him!" McGonagall shrieked.
Of course the Jaffa only heard an incoherent yowl, but it was enough to make them jump.
"We must move camp again," Bre'tac said. "I am surprised he has lasted this long. Yet'ar! Bor'lan! Go and activate the shapa'i. Joe'mec, Rya'c, bring word to the camp. Ishtar-"
BOOM!
Bre'tac's words vanished in the echoing explosions. A fireball enveloped the nearest cargo ship and sent Jaffa flying in all directions. Another blast landed in the jungle, setting the trees ablaze. More fire fell from the sky, landing at the other end of the valley by the camp. McGonagall rolled to her feet, ears ringing and fur singed. Bre'tac was staggering upright a few yards away. She charged.
"MEEEEEEEEEOW!"
Though his ears were still ringing, Bre'tac heard the beast coming and managed to avoid its claws. The small creature scrambled into his path, hair on end and tiny fangs bared. He waved his staff weapon at it, trying to clear the way but it dodged and leapt at him again. He tried to go around it but it followed, digging its claws into his cape, and clawing half way up his shoulder before he managed to shrug it off. It let out another howl. He pitied the animal. He was sure it knew its master was not returning. But his pity only went so far. He had to regroup with the other survivors. He activated the staff weapon.
"You will move aside," he said, pointing the staff at the little beast.
The animal stood before him, four feet planted and tiny shoulders squared.
"EEEE ack!"
He'd have dismissed what sounded like an attempt to say his name as strange coincidence except the animal was looking into his eyes with far too much intelligence. He pulled the staff away.
"reee ack!" it tried again.
"Do you speak to me?" he asked, ducking as another blast landed in the jungle, spraying him with flaming leaves and soil.
The animal nodded its head. It dug one paw into the earth and began to trace out Tauri letters. He knew the Tauri alphabet, but didn't have much use for it until now.
Collar
With the word finished the animal stepped forward, and bent its head. He saw the metal collar bound around the animal's neck. The heavy links had rubbed away much of the fur.
"What of it?" he asked.
"OOOOOW!" it cried shaking its head about furiously.
"You want me to remove the collar?"
The cat nodded.
Bre'tac took the knife from his belt and knelt down. He slid the blade under the edge. The cat made a choking sound, but made noattempt to flee. The links were heavy, but he found one that didn't match the others, probably the latch. He jerked the knife upward. There was a harsh rasp of metal against metal, and then a sharp "ping" as the collar popped off onto the singed ground.
"And now?" he asked, as the animal shook itself and stretched.
Before his rapidly widening eyes the animal stopped stretching and started expanding. It took less then a second and all he could do was gawk. An elderly woman stood before him. She wore long gray robes and her hair was tied back in a greatly disheveled bun. Her neck was red and covered with blisters and bruises. She looked at him sharply through wire rimmed glasses.
"It's about bloody time," she growled. "Now, where is Harry Potter?"
"What are you?" Bre'tac asked, lowering his hand toward the trigger on his staff weapon.
"Don't be foolish," she snapped, eyes boring into him.
He backed off.
"That's better. Quickly now, where is the ship Harry was taken to? Is he on the craft that is firing on us?"
"That is very likely, though he may already be dead."
"Then the people on that ship will be in a desperate situation indeed. Can you show me the exact location of the craft on one of those monitor at the camp?"
"I can show you from the cargo ships, if you are willing to risk it."
She nodded and they rushed back across the burning, cratered field toward the two remaining ships. Most of the surviving Jaffa had run for the camp, but a few were trying to launch the ships and save them from destruction. The three Jaffa on board look rather surprised as the woman entered behind him, but were too busy trying to start up the engines to do much else.
"Master Bre'tac," said a young Jaffa woman with burns all down her left side. "The engines will not function. They have been sabotaged. I do not believe I can fix them."
"All of you, go to the shapa'i. We will follow when we can."
The three of them ran for the forest. Bre'tac brought up the sensors and communications system. Ba'al's flag ship was in orbit above them with ten Alkesh and several wings of Death Gliders. The force seemed excessive for the size of the camp they wished to destroy.
"If he is still alive, the boy is most likely aboard this craft, but I can not get you there in these ships."
CRACK!
Bre'tac whirled. The woman had vanished. He shook his head, wondering if he had been hallucinating. He ran from the ship into the burning forest. If they could reach the Tauri through the shapa'i they might yet survive the day.
CRACK!
A woman appeared in the corridor before them, holding a small stick in her hand. The security patrol had all of three seconds to look surprised before the walls attacked. Arms formed from the intricately inscribed gold and grabbed them, pinning arms and legs. The woman stalked towards them. She had a slight limp, but it barely detracted from the menace that hovered like a cloud around her. The floor rippled as if it were water as she walked upon it. She stopped before Ton'en, former first prime of Hera, and tapped him on the nose with the small stick she carried.
"Unless you would like to spend the rest of a very short life as a tuna fish, you will tell me where they are holding Harry Potter," she said, staring unblinking as the Jaffa.
"Who?"
She tapped the wall with the stick and large chunk tore itself free, morphing into the likeness of the boy they had captured on Nortus while battling Morrigan.
"This boy, where is he?"
"Lord Ba'al is questioning him."
"Where?"
"I will not tell you."
The five other members of the patrol gasped as Ton'en turned gray, and then scaly. He was shrinking and sprouting gills as she moved on to the next member of the patrol. The gold replica followed after her, miraculously animated.
"Tell me where they are keeping this boy."
Not since her trip to Prague had she received such consistently bad directions. She'd been searching the ship for nearly half and hour, and had yet to find Harry or any trace of this Ba'al character that was supposedly questioning him. She'd made it to the space craft with a leap of faith disapparation, and luckily had not ended up inside a wall, or splinched, but she couldn't risk another one so soon. She tried to find him with tracking spells, but those were utter rubbish. Most of them seemed unable to target or they would point at solid walls. She'd tried going straight through as they directed, but she wasn't as young as she used to be and using this much magic was wearing her down.
She came upon a room where several men stood by monitors with many glowing panels on them. She stunned all but one as she marched in the door and the last she stuck upside down to the far wall. She went and looked at the monitors but could make little sense of them. There seemed to be a picture of the planet which red dots circled around.
"How do I use these to find someone on the ship?" she asked the upside down man.
"I will tell you nothing," he said.
McGonagall frowned. She put her wand to the glowing panels. She thought a revealing spell might be able to help here. She'd used such magic to find information in books before.
"Revelo!"
The monitor sparked and went black and a panel on the side burst outward, revealing shattered crystals and smoking wires. Her frown deepened. She moved to the next monitor, which was still intact. There was a circle on the floor in front of it and she was a little skeptical about standing on it, but she did. There was a row of what looked a bit like piano keys along the bottom of the monitor, and she pushed down on the middle one.
For a moment she was standing in the forest on the rebel planet again. She drew back her hand and the forest vanished. She looked around the room, and saw the man hanging upside down on the wall and his unconscious fellows. She pushed the key again. The forest came back. She could still feel the key under her finger and the smooth floor under her feet. The forest around her must be some sort of illusion. She looked around and saw one of the Rebels running through the jungle to her right. What was his name?
"Rya'c!" she called.
The young man stopped and turned toward her, eyes wide and staff weapon aimed.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "How do you know my name?"
"That is of very little importance. I must speak with Bre'tac, and I do not know which of these confounded keys to hit, so it would simplify things if you could just get him to come here."
Rya'c approached and reached towards her. McGonagall was going to dodge away from such inappropriate pawing, but the young man's hand passed right through her.
"This is a hologram," he said.
"I suppose it is. But I don't really know what I'm doing and this ship is like a maze, so if you could find Bre'tac I would be much obliged."
"You're on Ba'al's ship?"
"Yes! Now please fetch Bre'tac!"
The young man nodded and ran off. McGonagall started as a blast of fire landed in the forest a few yards away. She grudgingly had to admit to herself that she was impressed by this alien technology. It was much less messy then sticking your head in the fire to send a message. She raised her finger from the key again and looked around the room. No one else had come in, but the men she had stunned were starting to stir. She conjured chains to make certain they didn't get into mischief while she was distracted and then pressed the key again. Bre'tac, Rya'c and a woman McGonagall didn't recognize came running a few minutes later.
"You are onboard the ship?" Bre'tac asked.
McGonagall nodded curtly. "Though it is not doing me any particular good at the moment. I need you to tell me what to do with these blasted panels. I can not find Harry nor anything else of use. All the guards I have captured tell me Ba'al is questioning him but I can get no straight answer beyond that."
"Where on the ship are you?" Bre'tac asked.
"In a room. There are three sets of monitors with glowing buttons and this one I am using now."
"But where on the ship?"
"I haven't the faintest notion."
"If you could activate the rings we might be able to take the ship. The shapa'i was hit by one of the blasts and we can not reactivate it."
"What are rings?"
"Is there a panel with a monitor that shows the planet? It should have a small icon on it, a cylinder with five divisions in it."
"There is."
"You should be able to-"
"That panel is currently producing a significant amount of smoke."
Bre'tac's face fell.
"If we could get a small party up to the ship-" he began.
"Bother!" muttered McGonagall.
She released the button and stepped out of the circle. The rebels were having trouble focusing on her problem at the moment. She sighed. At least, thanks to the "hollow-gram", it wouldn't be a leap of faith this time
The hologram vanished, and Bre'tac got a sinking feeling in his chest. For a moment he had hoped the woman who had been a cat would be their deliverance, but she seemed in no hurry to help. He'd ordered the remaining rebels to scatter into the forest when the shapa'i was hit. They had managed to send a distress call through to Earth, but before they could receive confirmation that the Iris over the Tauri gate was open, their own gate was lost to them. There was little they could do now but hide, and die bravely when Ba'al's forces landed to hunt them down.
CRACK!
The three warriors whirled as the cat woman appeared behind them.
"How-" Rya'c started to ask, but the woman cut him off with a sharp glare.
She looked at Bre'tac. "You know the layout of the ship? You would be able to locate Harry for me?"
He nodded.
She threw her arms around him.
He had time for a startled look at Rya'c and So'fra before the world twisted around and explosive sound filled his ears. He blinked.
And then he was standing in the communications center of Ba'al's command ship. Three of Ba'al's Jaffa lay in chains on the floor and another was stuck upside down to the wall by an unseen force. The cat woman sagged against him and he caught her before she slid to the floor.
"You're too bloody heavy," she muttered.
Her eyes were rolling around, unfocused in her head, and her face was growing more pale. A moment later she fainted. He put her over his shoulder and went to inspect the transport ring control panel. Several of the control and memory crystals had been damaged. He opened the side of an adjoining communications system and cannibalized some parts. He targeted them to the cargo ship by the camp. He stepped out into the hall and went to the room next door, where the rings would land. He activated them.
It was several minutes before they returned and he was growing concerned, but then Rya'c, So'fra, Yet'ar and Bor'lan appeared, and hope returned to him.
"Rya'c, stay here and continue to bring up as many of our warriors as you can. We will attempt to find Ba'al. The next group up will try to take control of the weapons systems."
Rya'c nodded toward the unconscious woman thrown over Bre'tac's shoulder. "Should I watch over her as well Master?"
"No, I will keep her with me. I believe she will awaken soon and we may need her."
Rya'c nodded and sent the rings down again.
Her ears were ringing and she had a suspicion that her hair was on fire. Professor McGonagall sat up and groaned. Her wand was still clenched tightly in her fists, but she was no longer in the room she had apparated to. She slapped out the smoking stands in her bun and crawled away from the panel that was sparking above her head. There were people running up and down the halls outside the small area she'd been left in. Her right leg ached almost as badly as her head. She saw one of those staff weapons lying on the floor, just out side and used it to levy herself to her feet.
"Cree Jaffa!" echoed up the hall.
She recognized Bre'tac's voice and hobbled towards it. A Jaffa leapt out in the hall before her and an orange blast of light came at her.
"Protego!" she said, waving her wand.
The orange light turned about in midair and sailed back at the Jaffa, striking the end of his staff and dissolving it into slag.
"Stupefy!"
Her attacker sank to the floor. She came across Bre'tac and two other rebels a dozen yards further on. They were crouched behind some sort of control panel exchanging fire with five times as many guards. She pointed her wand.
"Torrentus!"
A gale force wind blasted through the corridor, sending the ship's guards tumbling into a wall at the far end. The rebels turned towards her.
"I must find Harry Potter," she reminded them.
Bre'tac nodded. "We are certain Ba'al is somewhere on this deck, but he had modified the layout of the ship since last we had contacts here. His Jaffa are disorganized and I believe he is cut off from communication with them. We must search."
McGonagall nodded. "You are certain he is on this deck?"
Bre'tac nodded.
She tried another locator spell as the Rebels looked on in confusion, but her wand pointed her at another blank wall. She sighed. Her magic was not even halfway recovered from bringing Bre'tac up to the ship with her. Blasting through any number of walls did not seem to be viable option. She dropped the staff, put her wand back into the pocket of her robes, and turned into a cat.
Though dogs get all acclaim for tracking skills, cats have an equally good, if not superior sense of smell. They simply don't feel inclined, on most occasions to put it to use. The re-circulated air on the ship also posed a challenge, but it was not something she couldn't over come. McGonagall tore off down the hall. She heard feet trampling after her but they rapidly fell behind. The deck was full of twists and turns and on several occasions she crossed the path of enemy Jaffa, but they took little interest in her. It still took twenty minutes to track Harry down. He'd been dragged along the floor for quite a distance, and the trail ended in a sealed door, which several of Ba'al's own Jaffa were trying to open. She transformed and stunned them all. The door was not much of a challenge to her. Rather then bothering with the sparking control panels, she simply melted the whole thing, and a bit of the wall as well.
The room crackled with traces of accidental magic, and the décor suggested a mountain troll had recently gone on a rampage within its confines. There was rubble everywhere and the remains of the ceiling looked none too sturdy. And of course in the middle of the mess was Harry Potter.
"Oh Mr. Potter, what have you done to yourself?" she muttered, kneeling down by his side.
She pushed away a chunk of ceiling that had fallen on top of him. He was strapped to metal frame and covered with scrapes, burns, and bruises. She freed him from the frame only to discover further injuries. Two narrow metal cylinders had been driven into the back of his neck and skull. The exposed parts weren't much longer then the end of her little finger, but she had no idea how deep they went. She peeled back Harry's eyelid, but the pupils didn't respond to the light. When she put her hand to his throat she found a faint pulse. He was oddly stiff, almost as if rigor-mortis had set in before death.
"Can you hear me?" she asked.
He made no response.
She traced a diagnostic spell over him, wishing she was more practiced in the healing arts. It told her he was bruised, beaten, and burned, and that there was something wrong with his head, which she thought was most likely due to the large piece of metal jammed in it. She raised her wand, concentrating and hoping for the best. She vanished the cylinders. Harry relaxed suddenly, limp as boiled celery. He made a sort of strange gagging sound and looked around. He tried to talk and she leaned in, straining to hear.
"…my head…in my head…"
His eyes sank closed. He was referring the cylinders she supposed. She shook him and called his name but he wouldn't wake again.
"Is he alive?" called a voice from the doorway.
McGonagall turned and saw Bre'tac. She nodded. He entered the room carefully, staff weapon still glowing, and crossed to the other side of the room. McGonagall followed his line of sight and realized there was a dead man half buried over there. Bre'tac pushed some of the rubble off the body with the end of his staff.
"It was Ba'al," he said, sounding a bit awed.
He leaned down and inspected the back of the dead man's neck, and jerked his hand suddenly away.
"The Goa'uld has left its host."
McGonagall looked up, and saw the staff weapon glowing a few inched from her nose.
"I do not have parasites," she said, dismissing him with a glare and looking back over Harry. "Could that possibly be it?" she asked, pointing to the green gray lump resting in a blue-ish puddle about halfway between herself and the corpse.
Bre'tac walked over and poked it with his staff as well. "It is dead," he confirmed needlessly. The old Jaffa continued to look around the room, half amazed. "How did this happen?"
"Wizarding children tend to react explosively when threatened, though Mr. Potter is a bit old to do something like this. He must have been unusually terrified," McGonagall explained.
"The young of your world blow things up when frightened?" Bre'tac asked.
"Not generally, no," McGonagall said as she looked over Harry for other injuries. "Shouldn't you be taking control of the ship or some such thing?" she added.
"Rya'c had taken the bridge and Ishtar is using the ships weapons to destroy the Alkesh. At the moment you are my concern," he answered.
"Am I?" she asked.
She waved her wand conjuring up bandages for the cuts and icing charms for the bruises.
"I was told the boy was Tauri, from Earth," Bre'tac said.
He walked slowly towards her, eyeing the wand and its effects with great curiosity and concern.
"We are from Earth, yes," McGonagall said.
"But you…are you ancients?" he asked almost reverently.
"Ancient what's?"
"The Ancients are the builders of the shapa'i, the Stargates. They had immeasurable knowledge and incomprehensible powers, but they disappeared eons ago."
"I've never heard of such people," McGonagall said. "Except possibly in reference to Atlantis, but that's a ledged from before the beginning of history, so I wouldn't put much stock in it."
"Then what are you?"
"I am a witch."
"There is no such thing," he protested.
"Well there most obviously is, as I am here before you," McGonagall said.
She stood up, and cast a levitation charm over Harry.
"How do you do these things?" Bre'tac asked.
"I use magic."
"What is magic? The Goa'uld claimed to have magic, but the Tauri taught us they used machines to do the things we could not ourselves explain."
"Is there a secure room around here?" McGonagall asked changing the subject. "I would like to put Harry somewhere he can rest comfortably."
"Ba'al's personal chambers are several corridors down from here. I searched there first, before finding you here."
"I suppose that will do," she said.
They started walking, with Harry floating along behind them.
"What do you mean by magic?" Bre'tac started again. "Can you explain to me what it is, how it works?"
"Can you explain red to a color blind man?" she asked.
"How can someone be color blind?"
McGonagall sighed.
The subspace communication system was completely destroyed. One of Ba'al's Jaffa had tried to call in more ships and Rya'c had stopped him with a Tauri grenade. Neither the enemy Jaffa nor the control panel had survived. Ba'al's Jaffa had also tired to activate the self destruct. The rebels had stopped them, but much more of the ship was damaged in the process. Besides communications, the weapons systems were damaged, on the outside from the battle with the Alkesh and in the control rooms by the battling Jaffa. The Hyper-Drive was working, but power was fluctuating and they didn't really know why. If they were going anywhere it would have to be in short jumps. The Jaffa had plenty of experience using Goa'uld technology, but they were not taught much about repairing it. Aside from replacing parts with spares and trying to reroute around damaged areas, they were more then a little out of their league.
Bre'tac looked over the maps they had been able to pull up from the ship's archive. They were not so far from Earth. With short jumps they could be there in five days. It was the only secure place he could locate with in range of the ships damaged engines. He had considered sending the rebels back to the planet and letting the self destruct run its course, but the shapa'i was still not working. It and the dialing device had been damaged in the bombardment and he could not guarantee they would be able to repair them and leave before another of the System Lords came to inspect the planet where Ba'al was last seen.
Bre'tac instructed them to bring up the last of the supplies from the camp and to check over the engines again. Once they were ready to leave they would transport the last of Ba'al's surviving Jaffa to the planet's surface and head for Earth. Without the com systems to identify themselves, they were not likely to get a warm greeting from the Tauri, but Bre'tac thought they could use the radios to get a short range message out before they were fired upon. He found himself half smiling as he imagined O'Neill's face when he saw Ba'al's command ship entering their solar system.
Bre'tac left the command center and began the long hike to Ba'al's chambers, where he had left the unconscious boy and the witch-cat. He knocked on the ornately decorated door.
There was shuffling inside.
"Come in," called the witch.
Bre'tac pressed the panel. There was a protesting chime, indicating the door was locked. He told her so.
"One moment!" she called.
There was more shuffling. He could hear chimes coming from inside the room as she hit a series of incorrect keys on the panel.
"It is the third button from the top of the panel," he called. "It has a symbol of open arms upon it."
There was another chime. This time the door slide upwards into the ceiling, revealing the witch.
She appeared very different from the last time he had seen her. She was wearing a different set of robes. He wondered where she had gotten them, as they fitted her too well to have been Ba'al's. Then again, she claimed to have magic powers. Perhaps she had just created them from the empty air. Her gray hair was rearranged in neat braid, and she had a scarf around her neck, covering the marks caused by the collar. She had her "wand" in her hand, but she lowered it as she recognized him. Her mouth twitched in what might have been the hint of a smile.
"Do come in," she said, stepping aside.
Bre'tac gave her a short bow and entered, feeling slightly awkward. He started to speak, but suddenly was uncertain of what to call her. Was she Professor, or was that something the boy called her? He didn't want to insult her. He realized suddenly that he very much did not want her to be angry with him. What was the Tauri custom for situations like this? He held out his hand.
"I am Master Bre'tac," he said.
She took his hand and shook it firmly. "I am Professor McGonagall. In all this rushing about I suppose introducing myself slipped my mind."
"I would like to thank you for helping us capture this vessel. Without your intervention we may have perished on the planet bellow," Bre'tac said.
"And I, in turn, must thank you for looking after Mr. Potter. I think I would have been happier had you turned him out and sent the fool boy home, but as it was you were very patient with him."
"We were told he could not return to Earth," Bre'tac said.
"His life will be in grave danger there, but the only people who can help him reside there as well," McGonagall said.
"My former student and most trusted friend, Teal'c, told me the Trust was hunting him."
"That bunch of Muggles who tried to snatch him from the hospital on the other world?"
When Bre'tac nodded she continued.
"They're nothing compared to what's waiting for him on Earth, but he is needed. I shudder to think of what is going on in our country without him."
"He is that powerful?" Bre'tac asked.
He had seen the boy do some amazing and impossible things, but when it came to combat the boy did not have warrior's instincts.
"It is not power that makes him important," she said and then paused. "Our society is very…xenophobic I suppose is the best way to describe it. We have laws explicitly forbidding us from revealing our existence to outsiders who have no magic of their own. We are prohibited from telling even our friends among the muggles-"
"Muggles?"
"Humans who have no magic of their own."
"Do these laws include Jaffa?"
"As we had no notion that you existed, I think you are exempt. In any case I believe the fact that you travel between stars on space ships has our little conspiracy far overshadowed."
"But the boy?"
"He is important to our society because he is alive."
"That does not seem such a high standard to live up to."
"Among us it is. As an infant his parents were murdered, and the man who killed them makes these Goa'uld creatures look like saints."
"What are saints?"
"Never mind. The point is, this man, He-who-must-not-be-named, killed the boy's parents and then went to kill him, still in his crib. He had killed other children…so many others, but some how when he went to murder that tiny creature he himself was destroyed."
She looked across the room and Bre'tac followed her gaze. The boy was resting in a bed that looked as if it came from the SGC infirmary, his wildly upright hair sticking above the white sheets. He knew Ba'al had no such furniture. A Goa'uld did not need to sleep, and if they needed rest they would put themselves in a sarcophagus. The boy's face was pale, making the bruises stand out even more. His body would heal in time Bre'tac supposed, but he had some concern for the boy's sanity. Ba'al was known for his ability to destroy even the strongest minds, and he'd had the boy for nearly a day. They wouldn't know until he awoke.
"How did he survive?"
"Nobody knows. But whatever it was that saved him, He-who-must-not-be-named could not stand it. He created a new body for himself, and tried to regain his powers through the boy, but Harry survived him yet again. He tricked Harry into another confrontation half a year ago, and still the boy survived. No matter how may times he has tried to kill Harry Potter, he has survived."
"And your people think he is the only one who can defeat this unnamable one?"
"Something like that. With Harry Potter around my people knew that He-who-must-not-be-named had a weakness, that it was possible to defeating him. Without Harry, I fear they will loose hope. They will loose the will to resist Him, because if he has defeated the boy-who-lived, what chance do they have? I am afraid of what is happening in our homeland without him there."
"We are returning to Earth," Bre'tac told her.
She nodded. "In this craft I assume."
He nodded. "The shapa'i is damaged beyond our ability to repair. The engines of this ship are damaged as well. It will take up at least five days to reach the Tauri."
"I suppose he will be alright until then," McGonagall said, nodding toward the boy.
"Do you believe he can defeat this nameless one?"
The witch woman shook her head. "I don't believe any one person can. But Harry can not run forever. He has learned how to fight with his fists from you, but to survive He-who-must-not-be-named, he will need to fight with magic, and he can not learn that anywhere but Earth. We will protect him until he has learned enough."
"Is he family to you?" Bre'tac asked.
She snorted. "I could never raise so foolish a child as this," she said almost affectionately. "He is one of my students."
"You are a teacher as well?" Bre'tac asked.
She nodded. "That's what 'Professor' means. I teach Transfiguration."
"And that is magic." Bre'tac said.
"A type of magic, yes."
He was still trying to figure out what she had said earlier about describing the color red. Whatever this "magic" was it still sounded much like what the ancients used, though McGonagall apparently did not have the healing powers that O'Neill had for the few days he was possessed by the Ancient's knowledge.
McGonagall paced the room once and then took a small vase from an alcove and put it in the center of the room. She waved her wand over it and it morphed suddenly into a chair. She took a step towards it and wobbled. Bre'tac caught her elbow.
"Are you unwell?" he asked.
She shrugged off his hand and waved the wand again. The chair expanded into a couch. She immediately sat down. He leaned over and pressed down on the seat with his hand, not quite believing it was real. When it proved solid he sat as well.
"I am getting too old for this sort of thing," McGonagall said.
"How old is too old?" Bre'tac asked.
"Eighty seven," McGonagall replied.
Bre'tac laughed. "I am one hundred and thirty nine."
"Well you are in much better shape then the other centagenarians I know."
"Do you know very many?"
"Only a handful actually."
They sat in silence for a long while. Bre'tac was less certain then ever of what he should say. This witch woman had powers he would not have dreamed of, and yet she seemed completely lost dealing with even the simplest technology. If these witches would ally themselves with the rebel Jaffa they could unseat the Goa'uld from power completely. And yet this unnamable creature they battled sounded more powerful then Anubis, who had come so close to concurring the galaxy less then a year ago. If this creature were made aware of the larger universe, what could they do to stop him?
"When we return to Earth, where do you wish to go?" Bre'tac asked.
"I am uncertain. I should contact a colleague of mine, Dumbledore, before we get too close. We will have to hide Mr. Potter's return from his enemies."
Bre'tac nodded. "These are dangerous times. I wish you luck in your battle." He stood, knees aching. "I must make certain the younger warriors are not flying us into a sun. I will return latter."
McGonagall stood as well and walked him to the door. He bowed as he left and she returned the gesture with a little smile. He started the long walk back to the command center felling suddenly several decades younger.
Professor McGonagall put her feet up on the transfigured couch and closed her eyes. It had been an incredibly long day. She had just started to doze when she heard the creaking of bed springs on the other side of the room. She turned and saw Harry was sitting up, and looking around the room with a slightly confused expression. She schooled a very stern look onto her face, so he wouldn't think getting injured had gotten him out of trouble with her.
"How are you feeling Mr. Potter?" she called across the room.
He turned and looked at her, and then smiled widely.
"Better then ever, Professor."