Author's note: The next update will be out soon, I promise. Don't forget to review.
Crumpets Aren't My Style
By Marz
Enough Loose Ends to Hang Us With
"Do you truly believe she still lives?" Teal'c asked.
"The boy bent Ba'al's will enough to save our lives. He would fight even harder for her," Bre'tac said confidently.
Teal'c nodded. Parties were searching the ship for any other traps or tricks Ba'al might have left. Bre'tac had insisted on searching with them. He'd taken a shot to the leg fighting his way to the shield generators, but he refused to lie down and rest. The wizards had used their magic and found no trace of the missing woman, McGonagall. Still, Bre'tac insisted they look for her. Their search had already gone on for several hours, and Teal'c knew his teacher would not stop until he had found her, dead or alive.
They were passing the water storage tanks when Bre'tac stopped short. He tapped the side of one of the tanks with his staff weapon, which he had until that point been using as a crutch. There was a hollow gong.
"She is within!" he declared.
"How do you know?"
"I only know, not how or why!"
Bre'tac raised his staff weapon and fired, again and again until a small section of the wall glowed white hot, and finally melted into fuming orange slag. The old Jaffa knelt, sweat pouring down his face and peered into the hole. Something moved within.
"Professor?" he called, his voice echoing inside the tank. "Professor McGonagall! Answer me if you are able!"
A shadow appeared in the hole. Two tiny white circles of light reflected in its eyes. Suddenly the cat leapt forward, dancing carefully over the puddles of still-molten metal. Teal'c reached down to pick up the animal, but it dodged away and continued running down the hall.
"Professor McGonagall!" Bre'tac called.
The cat paused and looked back at them. Before, she had been a blur of gray motion but now that they could see her clearly, both were disturbed. The cat once again bore a collar, but this one seemed to be made of barbed wire. The cat's fur had been burned off in several places and one of its ears was raggedly torn.
"Do you not know me?" Bre'tac asked.
The cat let out a weak little mew.
"We have retaken the ship from the Goa'uld. Your own people have arrived on board. They are helping the boy as we speak," Bre'tac explained.
The cat swished its tail sharply and walked back to them. Bre'tac knelt and scooped up the tiny creature. He took the knife from his belt and tried to cut off the collar, but it resisted the blade.
"We will have to take her to her own people," Bre'tac concluded, and marched off down the hall with the animal who might also be a woman in his arms.
Teal'c paused for a moment to watch him go. He hadn't once questioned whether or not the cat truly was what Bre'tac claimed. He wondered idly if he would ever come across something he would be able to appreciate as strange again.
"I'm still not quite understanding your plan," Daniel Jackson said as he jogged along behind the two red-haired men.
They had been introduced as brothers, Bill and Charlie. The former was very tall with longish hair pulled back in a ponytail and a fang hanging from his ear. The other was stockier with shoulders almost as broad as Teal'c's and a much more conservative hair cut. Bill claimed to be a curse breaker who worked for goblins, while Charlie was a magical creatures expert. Charlie said he could deal with the problem in the Prometheus' mess hall, though his specialty was dragons.
"It's simple really," said Charlie. "A werewolf is a person infected with a cyclically activated transmogrifying curse. It's been theorized that direct and intense exposure to pure moonlight would effectively burn the curse out of the infected person."
"You do know that moonlight is just reflected sunlight?" Daniel asked.
Charlie shrugged.
"So what are you going to do?" asked Daniel.
"We're going to put him outside on the surface for a few minutes," Bill said.
"But there isn't any atmosphere on the moon. In all likelihood he'll just explosively decompress."
"Ah, muggles," Bill said in tone that was both friendly and condescending.
They came to a stop in one of the Goa'uld ship's ring rooms.
"I think we should just apparate," said Bill, looking around the gaudy, gold-themed room with suspicion.
"Here," Daniel said, waving them both onto the ring platform.
"So we just stand here?" asked Charlie. "We don't have to put on electric hats or shoes or something?"
"Um…no," said Daniel as he targeted the Prometheus and typed in the command code, with a three second delay. Bill started fidgeting.
"Stay!" Daniel ordered.
There was a loud electronic warbling and the rings leapt out of the floor. Bill and Charlie both brought up their hands as if to ward off a blow. White light flashed and in the next instant the rings were dropping into the deck of the Prometheus.
"The mess hall is this way," said Daniel after waving to the guards.
Bill and Charlie hurried along after him. They passed several windows on the way and the brothers let out appreciative whistles.
"Earth looks small," said Bill.
"In universal terms it is relatively small. Most of the planets we know of are actually gas giants, the size of Saturn or larger. Of course the worlds we visit are very similar to Earth in atmosphere and ecology, but there is also some evidence that those worlds were terra-formed…but we're here about the werewolf," Daniel said, cutting off his own ramblings.
They came to the door of the mess-hall, still seamlessly sealed from whatever Snape had done to it. Daniel took a notebook from his pocket and sketched out the mess hall, kitchen, and storage room. The two brothers hemmed and hawed over the drawing.
"So he could be in any one of these rooms?"
Daniel nodded.
"Alright. You stay here," said Bill.
"Uh…no," said Daniel, as he pulled his zat from its holster.
"You've never dealt with a werewolf before," said Charlie.
"And you have?" Daniel asked.
"Not in these exact circumstances," Charlie admitted.
"Is there any chance we'll be able to convince Lupin to come along quietly?" Daniel asked.
Charlie gave his a you-are-so-stupid look. "The werewolf isn't Lupin. It's just inhabiting him."
"Is it capable of basic reasoning?" Daniel asked. "How close is it to human intelligence?"
"What?" asked Charlie.
"I mean, do we have to worry about it setting up booby traps, or will it just act like a very large, rabid dog?"
"A werewolf is probably a little smarter then a dog, but they don't use tools," Charlie said after a moment's hesitation. "But don't underestimate it either. Bill and I will go in first. We'll look things over and you watch our backs."
Daniel withheld a sigh. Why did everyone expect him to nerd everything up? He didn't think he'd get better out of them so he nodded. Bill touched his wand to the seamless door and it opened before them.
All the overhead lights had been smashed. It was also obvious to everyone with a sense of smell that the werewolf had not been paper-trained. Bill raised his wand in the air and mumbled something Latin-ish. A small sphere of light formed at the tip of his wand and then darted to the center of the room, expanding as it went.
The tables in the mess hall had all been overturned, a few had even been broken in half. The storage lockers had been ripped open and napkins, cutlery, and packages of ketchup were alternately tossed and spattered about the room. Bill and Charlie darted in.
Daniel watched from the doorway, zat leveled as the two brothers searched the room. He had to admit they were fairly efficient, covering one another while they looked behind the overturned furniture. The werewolf wasn't there. Bill headed for the door leading to the kitchen. There were claw marks in it, five distinct lines, the last one in each set twisted in, implying that the thumb was not entirely gone. Bill tapped the door with his wand and it slid open. The ball of light he had conjured flew into the room before him.
Bill and Charlie went through the next door and Daniel moved in to cover their backs. Pots, pans, ladles, and every other implement that wasn't very solidly affixed to the walls had been scattered across the floor. It was impossible to take a step without the clink of metal under one's feet. The air was misty, cold, and wet. The doors of the huge refrigerators had been pulled off their hinges. One lay on the floor and the other was on its side, tilted up against the wall. The little fluorescent light in the refrigerator was still on, spilling a blue-ish glow over a punctured carton of milk and broken eggs.
Daniel suddenly felt watched. Bill and Charlie were already focusing on the open door of the storage room. Daniel looked around the kitchen again. The room was square with all the appliances and cabinets along the walls. His eyes were drawn to the tilted refrigerator door. There might be just enough room for a person to hide in that little triangle of space if they lay down.
Bill and Charlie darted into the storeroom wands at the ready. Bill's conjured light darted on ahead of them. Daniel activated his zat, but remained in the kitchen doorway. As the wizards disappeared from view the tilted refrigerator door twitched.
"It's still in-" Daniel didn't get to finish his sentence.
The broken door went flying across the room and the archaeologist stumbled backwards as a large gray blur lunged at him. The zat went off.
The monstrous thing fell twitching to the floor, but it was still conscious and Daniel barely managed to leap back in time to avoid its grasping claws. He aimed the zat at the creature as it tried to rise to its feet, slipping on the pans it had scattered across the floor. A second shot from the zat would kill a human. He didn't know what it would do to a werewolf.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
The werewolf gave a startled and very doglike yelp as it was lifted off its feet. Its legs kicked uselessly as it tried to turn towards its attackers. Charlie was standing in the storage room doorway with his wand pointed, and Bill sidled through the door behind him. All three men stood staring at the creature. Daniel finally had a clear look at it and was very disturbed by what he saw. There was no hint of Lupin's features in the animal before them, but the body looked more like a human's than a wolf's, fur, claws, tail, and snout aside.
They didn't have much trouble getting the creature back to the Goa'uld ship, though quite a few members of the Prometheus crew came to the ring room to gawk a bit before they left.
"What's that thing you shot him with?" asked Bill as the three of them walked from the Goa'uld ring room towards the ship's airlock.
"It's called a zatnikat'al. It's a Goa'uld designed weapon. Colonel Carter can explain how it works better than I can. The way I understand it, it temporarily superexcites electrons. It feels like an electrical shock but it's more complicated. One shot will knock most people unconscious, but we've noticed that if you're hit on a fairly regular basis, once every few months or so, you build up some immunity to it. A few people at the SGC can get up within minutes of being hit. Two shots in close proximity will kill and a third shot will make the electronic structure of the target's molecules so unstable that they literally fly apart."
Charlie and Bill both looked rather befuddled.
"What's an electron?" Bill asked.
Daniel was still trying to explain atoms to the Weasleys when they reached the airlock at the bottom of the ship. The werewolf had stopped its kicking and growling and seemed rather subdued. Charlie levitated it through into the tiny, gold-paneled room and Daniel pressed the button that closed the door.
They stood around waiting slightly awkwardly until the wizard called Albus Dumbledore arrived, with the three Healers in tow. Dumbledore smiled at everyone, giving off very strong doddering old man vibes. Daniel and the Weasleys stepped aside so he could peer through the small window into the air lock.
"It's been nearly twenty four hours since he transformed?" Dumbledore asked.
Daniel nodded. Dumbledore brought out his wand and touched it to the little window, which suddenly expanded until the entire airlock door was transparent. The werewolf lunged at it and bounced off with an injured yelp. Dumbledore muttered something else and suddenly the werewolf was hovering a few inches off the floor. It kicked about and Daniel got the impression that it was trapped in some kind of invisible bubble.
"Dr. Jackson," Dumbledore said. "If you would open the outside door?"
Daniel went to the panel with a sinking feeling. He thought it was worth one last try.
"You do know the radiation out there is enough to kill him. As someone who's died of radiation poisoning I can tell you, it's not a good way to go."
Dumbledore nodded kindly but waved for him to proceed. Daniel pressed the buttons.
Lupin watched as the door slid open. He was hurled into motion as if the ship had suddenly spat him out. He saw the gloriously white surface stretched out before him and felt it almost immediately. The madness seemed to rise up through his mind, the uncontrollable urge to bite and tear and kill became weightless, moving through him as if it could find no purchase. The feelings in his body were less pleasant. He was sure his bones had melted and were floating up through his skin. His eyes were squeezed shut from the pain, but with supreme effort he opened them. He could see the end of his own face, still more snoutlike than human, slowly shrinking, a black foul smoke rising from it and every other bit of himself that he could see.
He couldn't keep them open long. The pain was too great. He could feel the transformation reversing, much the same as it did at sunrise once every twenty-seven days. But this time he knew. He could feel it, and the creature inside him could feel it too.
The werewolf howled one final time and then vanished in the burning brightness of the moonlight.
Lupin knew he had blacked out then. One moment he was lying in a bubble charm on white rock and the next he was in a room paneled with gold, three women looking over him. He thought they were somewhat familiar. The werewolf had probably seen them. Its memories were never quite in synch with his own.
He sat up. No one tried to stop him. His whole body stung as he moved. Dumbledore, Charlie and Bill Weasley and the muggle Daniel Jackson were standing behind the three women, watching him as well. He looked down at himself. Someone had conjured a blanket over him, but the exposed flesh of his arms was red and scalded looking as if he had terrible sunburn.
He smiled. Then he started to laugh. He couldn't stop.
He added another cupful of frog's blood and stirred the cauldron. The potion should have been black with a layer of red rubbery solids at the bottom, but it remained a watery gray, refusing to thicken or separate. Snape stared into the brew, struggling to keep his temper in check.
Dumbledore had had the foresight to bring a potions kit with him, but he had miniaturized it for easy transportation. Ingredients that had been spelled simply didn't react the way they were supposed to. The headmaster should have known. It was one of the basic rules of potion making. He was considering adding some powdered moonstone when it woke up.
Dumbledore and the Healers had put wards in place to prevent him from using Potter's magic, and then chained him to a chair. Snape didn't see anything truly alien in Potter's behavior, it was almost predictable really. First he tried to wiggle out of the chains, and when that didn't work he tried "Alohamora", with no more success. His head came up and he looked around the room, eyes flashing with orange light as they came to rest on Snape.
"Release me," he demanded in low rumbling voice.
"No," Snape said, and went back to mixing his potion.
Instead of moonstone he added some Dead Sea silt. The potion turned a darker shade of gray, but it still wasn't quite right.
"Release me now and I will spare you," the thing wearing Potter said.
"Ba'al is it?" Snape asked, but did not wait for an answer. "In case you have not noticed, (and being an occupant of Potter's rather dense mind I find that very likely), you are in no position to make demands."
Ba'al stared at him for a moment, and then his expression changed from one of contempt to mild amusement.
"The host actually wants me to escape and kill you," Ba'al said, as if they were sharing a joke. "Perhaps you are not such a great waste of matter after all."
Snape snorted and added a quarter cup of windcrulp eggs to the brew. It finally began to separate, but the color still wasn't right. It didn't surprise him that Potter wanted him dead. The boy blamed him for everything from poor potion skills to the existence of the Dark Lord. Ba'al was still studying him when he looked up again.
"How would you like your own world?" Ba'al asked suddenly.
"What?" Snape said.
"Bribes frequently succeed where threats fail," Ba'al said. "Does a planet sound like a fair exchange for my freedom?"
"And where would you get a planet from?" Snape asked, stirring the potion absentmindedly. "You have the deed to Saturn in your back pocket, by chance?"
Ba'al snorted. "The muggles have told you nothing of us, have they? The Goa'uld rule half the galaxy. I have hundreds of habitable worlds in my possession."
Snape looked at him and realized he wasn't lying. For an idle moment he wondered what he would do with his own planet. No doubt it would end up filled with snot-nosed brats who couldn't mix a shrinking solution to save their own lives. He snorted.
"Humanity must indeed be in desperate straits if a thing such as you could overthrow them so easily. It seems threats and bribery have both failed you. Have you considered begging?" Snape asked sneering.
"I will kill the host before I let you take it from me."
"And what a terrible shame that would be," Snape said, watching the figure in the chair for any sign of the arrogant, self-possessed boy he'd grown to loath.
"Your master seems to think so."
"Yes the headmaster does want the disobedient little urchin de-wormed. You're inside his head. You can see his memories. You know it is within our power. If we decide to remove you there is nothing you can do about it."
"I have destroyed civilizations, conquered hundreds of worlds," the boy continued in a resonant and unnaturally low voice. "I saw your kind before the idea of a city ever came into your minds, and I will see the last of your cities burned to ashes. You are nothing!"
"I very much doubt you will be anything past this afternoon, either."
The Goa'uld glared at him but before the conversation could continue Albus Dumbledore strode into the room.
"You will excuse us for a moment," Dumbledore said to the occupant of the chair, waving his wand at Potter and conjuring up a baffle spell to keep him from overhearing.
"Severus," Dumbledore continued, "You'll be happy to hear that Remus not only survived, but is recovering rapidly, and appears to be completely cured. Minerva has turned up as well, in the arms of a rather dashing Jaffa, as fate would have it. He seems quite taken with her-"
Snape held up his hand to thwart further details. Dumbledore smiled and changed the subject, slightly.
"I think we might be able to make arrangements with the SGC to bring up others afflicted with lycanthropy. It would seriously disrupt Voldemort's influence over them."
"This is getting out of hand," Snape said as he put out the fire and set the potion on ice. The impurities of the brew began to crystallize and float to the surface.
"Whatever do you mean, Severus?" Dumbledore replied, a happy, almost childlike smile on his face.
Though Snape was more thankful than anyone that the headmaster was acting himself again, he didn't miss the bizarre favoritism and illogical faith that had come back stronger than ever.
"The muggles will not keep their word. They will make records of their encounter with us. They will reveal us to the world."
"Severus, if any muggles can keep a secret, it is these."
"And what proof have you of that?"
"Serverus, my dear suspicious friend, we are in an alien spacecraft, parked on the surface of the moon."
Snape glared and then glanced out the window at the bright gray and white surface that covered the distance to a much too near horizon.
"I still do not trust them."
There was a knock on the door and a moment later it slid open. General O'Neill stood in the entrance for a moment, as if uncertain whether or not he was welcome. He'd found some new clothes to replace his battered flight suit. They bore no insignia, and if he hadn't been introduced as a General, there would have been no reason to think he was one.
"Do come in," called Dumbledore.
The muggle approached them calmly. He had a slight swagger in his stride, which Snape found annoyingly familiar.
"So," O'Neill said in friendly sort of way, "What's up?"
"The sky of course," answered Dumbledore, "But you are more likely referring to the communications I have been making with the remains of our government. They have been, I am sorry to say, rather dense. I have attempted to explain to them the source of the attack was extraterrestrial, but they simply refuse to believe it."
"I wish we had that sort of problem back home," O'Neill said, peering into the cauldron. "What's this?"
"It is a potion," Snape said.
"Well duh," O'Neill said.
Snape didn't know the meaning of that phrase but he was fairly certain it was insulting. He glared at the muggle.
"It should isolate Harry's consciousness from the creature's before we remove the parasite," Dumbledore explained.
O'Neill nodded. "I don't think you really need that."
"And you are an expert in matters of mind control?" Snape asked.
O'Neill shrugged. "I've dealt with Goa'uld for the past decade. Considering you only found out they existed yesterday, I thought you might actually want to know something about them. You know, for example, that the symbiote can kill the host if it thinks it's going to be removed, things like that. To get to the point, we're not going to let you near the kid unless it looks like you have some idea of what you're doing."
Snape sneered. "And what do you think you could do to stop us?"
O'Neill's mouth quirked as if he were thinking of something very amusing, but apparently decided not to vocalize it. Snape tried to catch his eye, wondering what could give him such confidence. But the muggle refused to look at him.
"Have you fixed the thing on his chest yet?" O'Neill asked.
"What thing would that be?" Dumbledore asked.
Snape felt an unwelcome rush of surprise. He remembered Bellatrix carving the mark into Potter's chest, but it had slipped his mind. O'Neill walked up to the restrained teenager and pulled open the front of Potter's robes, revealing the dark mark. The lines of the mark were an irritated red. Snape checked his own forearm, and found his mark was the same color, rather then the fetid bruised black it had been on Earth. Dumbledore wandered over, suddenly less cheerful. He inspected it for several minutes, every once and a while looking over his shoulder at Snape, a gesture O'Neill would mimic much to Snape's annoyance.
"I may be able to remove this," Dumbledore said. "But at the moment I don't think it's a priority."
"It catches on fire sometimes," O'Neill said.
Dumbledore looked at him over the top of his spectacles.
"That's why we sent him off world," O'Neill continued. "It seems to have a limited range, only a few thousand miles. We haven't been able to get it off though."
Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. "I will confer with healer Peebles, but I think we must still deal with this Ba'al entity first."
O'Neill shrugged.
"Severus, would you please bring the potion here if it is ready," Dumbledore said.
Snape glared at them but took a goblet full of the potion and carried it over. Dumbledore forced the boy's mouth open with a spell and Snape tipped the potion in. Potter coughed and strangled, but finally choked it down. The three men stood watching.
Potter swallowed again, as if to clear the last of the goopy gray stuff from his throat, blinked twice and proceeded to scream. Snape dropped the goblet he was holding, flinching away from the sudden sound. Dumbledore stepped forward, placing a hand over Potter's eyes. The screaming faded away to a pained wail and then to a groan.
"Harry can you hear me?" Dumbledore asked.
"urk…p-p Professor Dumbledore?"
"I am here, Harry."
"I…I'm sorry…I'm…sorry. I killed them. I killed all of them. I couldn't stop him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
His voice faded to a low mumbling and his breathing came in harsh rasps. The old man lifted his hand, revealing the boy's bloodshot and watering eyes. O'Neill stepped forward.
"Listen, alright? None of this was your fault. If Ba'al hadn't crawled into your head he'd have gotten the next person who came along. If you hadn't a been there it would have happened to somebody else and the same stuff would've happened, only maybe somebody else wouldn't have been able to give Ba'al such a run around and we wouldn't be here. As it is, you've just got to hang on a little longer and then we'll have you back to your old self, playing cribbage."
"Quidditch," corrected Dumbledore.
"What?" asked O'Neill.
"I destroyed the school," Potter said.
"Actually," corrected Dumbledore, "You did not. As I was explaining earlier to the creature in your head, you misidentified an abandoned castle in Aberdeen Shire as the school. Sadly, the castle is no more, but no lives were lost, and Aberdeen Shire now has an 'Impact Crater' to garner a new tourist market. Hogwarts is actually quite a distance from the area destroyed, not that it didn't give us quite a turn when those staying at the castle for Christmas saw fire falling from the sky."
"But the Ministry, Ron's dad…"
"Sadly there was a significant loss of life in that area of London, Wizarding and Muggles both. Though it was no fault of your own, it may console you that Mr. Weasley was not at his desk at the time of the incident. He and the majority of ministry personnel with field training were, in fact, out in the field. Most others in the building disapparated after the initial impact."
"I didn't destroy the school?" Potter asked.
"Certainly not."
"I thought… It knows what I know, I tried to hide it but…"
"I told you that complete lack of geographical knowledge would come in useful some day," O'Neill quipped.
Potter smiled at him, but went back to his expression of tortured guilt a second later. Snape assumed he was racking up major sympathy points with the headmaster.
"Is it-" Potter started to ask. "Is it still in me?"
Dumbledore nodded. "Professor Snape's potion only suppresses the entity, Ba'al I believe it called itself? The Healers are making final preparations for its removal as we speak. They don't believe the separation will damage either of you."
"You're going to kill it aren't you?" Potter hissed, more of a demand then a question.
Dumbledore's eyes widened in surprise. He seemed about to say something soothing but O'Neill spoke first.
"Of course we are," the muggle growled. "How about we put it in the microwave?"
"I do not think vengeance will help," Dumbledore started.
"It won't help the snake," O'Neill said agreeably.
"I want it to die! I want it to die. I want it…" Potters voice trailed off.
Dumbledore leaned forward in concern. The boy's head came up, eyes glowing.
"It was nice while it lasted," muttered O'Neill.
Remus Lupin looked at his scarred hands, holding them above his head and inspecting them in different light and from different angles. From now on they would remain human hands; plain old human hands. He'd have to worry about hangnails popping up rather then claws. He shook a bit as another laugh escaped him.
"Are you certain he is well?" asked a slightly gruff male voice from the other side of the room.
Remus attention was drawn away from his hands to the old Jaffa standing beside Professor McGonagall's bed on the other side of the makeshift infirmary. Remus couldn't help it. He started laughing again.
"I'm certain that he's fine," said Professor McGonagall in a rasping voice. "Though it would be nice if he could quiet down a bit so some of us could get some sleep."
"Sorry," Remus called.
He knew she was still feeling under the weather. The collar Ba'al had put on her to prevent her from becoming human again had damaged her vocal cords and the healers had only just finished with her. Remus wanted to ask her what had happened during the months she'd been missing, but he knew he'd have to wait until she was feeling better.
He shifted in his bed and tried to sleep, but the stinging feeling hadn't faded from his skin and his eyelids refused to stay down. He did manage to sit quietly for a few minutes, but when healer Walsh came in, he couldn't resist telling her how human he felt. She said she'd make a note that giddiness was a side effect of the cure. Walsh tried to put a mild sleeping charm on him, but it didn't take. McGonagall had just recommended stunning him when Daniel Jackson walked in.
"Oh…am I…interrupting something?" he asked looking between the annoyed witches, the Jaffa, and the former werewolf.
"No," answered McGonagall. "Remus seems to be having trouble sleeping. Perhaps you could take him on a tour of the ship, or the hallway at least."
"Alright," Daniel said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I was just about to visit Sam in the Death Glider bay. Most of them were lost in the original battle for the ship, but she's disabling the homing program in the rest of them."
"Let's go then," Remus said, literally hoping out of bed.
"You might want to put some pants on first," Daniel suggested.
He listened contentedly to the flap and snap of the cloth as he walked. The headmaster had finally transfigured a decent set of robes for him out of a spare set of muggle fatigues. Snape had attempted to do it himself, but his borrowed wand just wasn't up to the challenge. The ship was mostly empty, but he had passed a patrol of Jaffa several corridors back. The Healers had insisted that all of them were free of the imperious curse Potter had put them under, but their stony expressionless faces didn't lead Snape to the same conclusion.
The Healers would be starting any minute now. Snape's eyes went to the ceiling. Eighteen levels up they would be prying the parasite out of Potter's brain. He supposed Dumbledore had thought he would enjoy watching too much, thus his current assignment. He was supposed to use the mirror to contact Molly Weasley at Grimmauld place and get a report on all recent sightings of Death Eaters.
He heard whispering, echoing around the next turn in the corridor, too low to make out the words. It was the corridor where they had hung the mirror. His borrowed wand was already in his hand. He rounded the corner, slinking into the shadows.
William Bennet was touching his wand to the mirror, blurring the image of whomever he was conversing with, and severing the connection. Bennet turned away from the mirror and started.
"Some pressing matter at home require your attention?" Snape asked. "Making certain your wife hasn't run off with a traveling cauldron salesman perhaps?"
Snape watched him unblinking, but Bennet would not meet his eye.
"I was just checking in with my office," Bennet said, focusing his gaze on Snape's forehead. "Our government is rather in shambles if you hadn't noticed."
"And you simply had to check your investments despite Dumbledore's explicit orders forbidding all communication for the next twelve hours?"
"I wasn't doing any harm," Bennet said, gaze slipping down to meet Snape's, and showing himself to be a liar.
Snape fired off a stunning hex, but Bennet blocked it.
"Are you mad?" he shouted at Snape, backing up.
Snape responded by sending another stunner his way.
"Stay away from me!" Bennet nearly shrieked.
Snape pointed his wand at the floor. The polished surface bulged and a wave of force flowed toward Bennet. The other man watched the moving floor carefully, timed the wave's approach, and leapt. He did not even come close to clearing it, and landed on the floor face first for his efforts. Snape summoned his wand away.
He was about to cast a binding charm when a familiar sensation clamped down on his left forearm. From the floor at his feet, Bennet began to laugh.
"And they require no magic at all?" Lupin asked, looking up in wonder.
"They use a sort of anti-inertia generator which we haven't quite figured out the physics of," Carter said, "But there's nothing in the Death Gliders that we haven't at least taken the first steps in explaining."
Lupin nodded, having trouble taking his eyes off the sleek craft which hung suspended between narrow catwalks, like nesting birds of prey. For a few minutes in a row he was able to think about something other than what happened on the surface. The giddiness had faded a bit on the way down through the bowels of the ship. Daniel was explaining how the Gliders tended to run off with their passengers, stranding them without air in the freezing void of space. Remus made interested noises whenever Daniel stopped talking, but he wasn't really listening to the words.
His ears didn't ring painfully with every sound and odors he usually found nearly overpowering were dull and almost impossible to detect. But as he turned around and saw what was behind their little tour group, he realized just how useful a werewolf's heightened senses were at times.
"Down!" he shouted.
Carter and Daniel dropped to the deck, bringing up their guns and turning, still crouched to aim at the five people in black robes and white masks coming up the catwalk behind them.
"So they're just going to open up the back of his head and pull it out?" O'Neill asked, watching the three healers suspiciously.
"Essentially, yes," the ancient man said.
O'Neill looked slightly worried. "It's just that we've tried that before and the results weren't exactly…good. We usually call in the Tok'ra."
"But you do not seem to trust them," Dumbledore said. "I get the feeling you want nothing to do with them."
O'Neill shrugged. "I don't like them, but they've never screwed up anything like this."
"But they will take weeks to arrive, if not months," Dumbledore said.
"We're quarantined on the moon for the next month at least. We'll be waiting either way, and I'd rather put up with a few more weeks of listening to the pointless ranting of the parasite then risk lobotomizing the kid."
"I assure you General, these healers have preformed very similar procedures."
"You said your people had never run into the Goa'uld," O'Neill said.
"Those creatures in particular, no. But Earth offers some equally…nasty creatures, which my people have learned to deal with."
"Like what?"
"Oh Mind-leeches, Incubi, and not five years ago there were some fascinating cave spiders discovered in New Mexico. I believe they entered through the ear. Apparently a mining consortium released them; it was quite a scandal. When the N.A.W.C. officials first arrived on the scene they mistook it for an uncontrolled summoning of Zombies and the situation only got worse from there."
"Hu…right."
"If you are still concerned, you are welcome to stay and witness the procedure."
O'Neill screwed up his face for a moment, and then sighed. "Let's get on with it."
The kid was already levitating when they entered the room. The three women in gray dresses he'd seen earlier were there, and at that moment they truly looked like witches. Each of them had a wand in one outstretched hand and a fistful of smoldering something in the other. They circled the kid, seeming to glide more then walk around him.
There was a strange buzzing in O'Neill's ears and he was tempted to ask if anyone else heard it, but thought better of it as white light started to pour from the kid's mouth and he began to rotate in midair. The boy tumbled until he was face down. One of the witches, made indistinguishable from the others by the gray cowl she had over her head, put her wand to the back of the kid's neck. Even from this distance O'Neill could see the parasite twitching under the skin in response.
The kid gagged but no one else seemed concerned. A line of light ran up the back of the kid's skull, visible even through the layers of unruly hair. Then suddenly the back of his head was peeling itself open. O'Neill could see the green-gray body of the Goa'uld, moving slightly out of synch with the pulses of blood that moved the rest of the tissue to the beat of the boy's heart.
One of the witches raised up her hand and the floor shook. O'Neill squinted concernedly and took a step towards the floating boy. It seemed like a lot of special effects when they could be pulling the thing out already. A hand on his shoulder made him turn. The shaking grew worse.
"That is not our doing," Dumbledore said.
O'Neill was reaching for his radio when the door slid open. The hallway was dark, and smoke drifted into the room. A high hissing came from the darkness.
"No, old man. It is mine."