Author's note: Sorry this update took forever and a day to get done. With so many positive reviews I was scared I was going to muck up the ending. Well, tell me what you think.

Crumpets Aren't My Style

By Marz

Eat Right and Exercise

McGonagall's skirts and robes whipped around her. She waved the wand, and though the vacuum stole her words, the metal bent to her will. The tear in the hull healed itself. Her robes gave a final slap against her shins, and then were still. The Jaffa gripping various uneven surfaces protruding from the walls and floor got shakily to their feet. The cornered Death Eater had tried to take them all with him, and failed.

"Mr. Brook was never very bright," she said, "but I'd have expected him to remember some little necessities such as atmosphere."

"A former of your students?" asked Bre'tac as he steadied himself with his staff.

McGonagall nodded.

"There are two more of them," buzzed the slightly distorted voice of Colonel Carter from the ship's com system.

McGonagall waited patiently for the muggle woman to direct them. She was rather impressed that the muggle had not only repaired the ship's "sensors" but had also managed to use them to detect the disruptions magic caused in the ship's power systems.

"Aft section, two decks up," the woman's voice buzzed. "Also there is a blank area on the scans where I received the last communication from General O'Neill. It could be a side effect of whatever they were doing. Charlie Weasley just went to check it out, but he might need backup."

"Do you think it's Ba'al?" McGonagall asked.

"It could be," said Carter.

"At least we no longer have to deal with Voldemort."

Pain.

Light.

Dark.

Light.

Dark.

Sensations overlapped, crashing torrents of agony, struggling to take up all the remaining space. Harry's head was bursting and he couldn't breathe, but somehow his mouth was still forming words, though he couldn't really understand them. He stumbled about blind and deaf as the two snakes within his head fought for control. He shook so hard the ribbon device slid from his hand.

He could feel Ba'al shutting down parts of his brain and overloading others, trying to force Voldemort out. The Goa'uld fought desperately to eject Voldemort, without really understanding how they were linked. No amount of tweaked neurons were going to excise him. The choking darkness didn't relent, even as Harry's arms went numb and his heart shuddered and halted, only to restart a few seconds later when that, too, failed to convince Voldemort to leave.

He didn't know how long it had been going on when Ba'al pushed his way into his consciousness.

Boy.

The thought was not his own. The symbiote had never tried to speak with him before.

Boy!

What? Harry thought back.

He will destroy us both. Help me expel him.

Why should I?

You will die with me!

So what? If we all go down then the universe will be a much better place.

The brightness returned, so overwhelming for a moment he forgot his name again.

You expelled him before. I used your memories. I replayed the images of your godfather exactly, but it did not work. How do I expel him?

You can't.

Why?

It was a question Harry had not considered before, but he suddenly understood the answer.

You aren't human. You don't have a soul. You don't have feelings. There's nothing in you that isn't also in him.

Harry felt it then, the creature's frustration and its fear. Images formed in Harry's mind; his parents, Sirius, Ron, Hermione, Mrs. Weasley, Professor McGonagall, Lupin. All of them appeared in his mind's eye, but Harry felt nothing. He could have been watching a stranger's home movies for all the emotion it evoked. The only thing he felt was hatred for the parasite. The hatred was so deep at that moment he couldn't have helped Ba'al even if he had wanted to. Instead he did nothing as darkness consumed them both.

I will not!

Voldemort could feel the creature squirming inside Potter's head, physically rearranging things in an attempt to make the body uninhabitable. He could respect its tenacity. He wouldn't show any mercy because of it, but he could respect it.

Slowly he found his way through Potter and into the creature's mind. It was strange, like trying to read upside down in a mirror, but he found the central nervous system, the on/off switch. He was about to kill the parasite when something else caught his attention: its memories.

Glimpses of other worlds were amazing, almost beyond description, but the memories of Earth were the most fascinating; Earth thousands of years ago, before cities covered the land, before muggles covered the planet. This creature had lived six thousand years at least, and showed no signs of decay.

Voldemort had to know more, but if he wanted control of the body, he had to take it now, before Potter could pull himself together. He didn't have time to go through every memory in the Goa'uld's mind, but as more of its memories surfaced, he found another way.

Ba'al struggled, trying to sever links to the human boy's brain, but it was too late. The Goa'uld felt chemical pathways in its own body cascade out of control. His flesh began to eat away at itself. He tried to shut the paths down. If he was going to die, he wasn't going to let the boy live. Something else was in control though, something that was forcing a controlled lysis without allowing him to release lethal enzymes into the host's body. Ba'al knew there might be a last chance at escape. If he could just sever the links to human he could crawl out. O'Neill was still in the room, not an ideal host, but any port in a storm.

Then another reaction started. The neurological interfaces with the host began to grow instead of shrink. Charges ran through his cells, accessing not only the active memories in living in the connected neurons but those buried in his genes as well. His memories slipped away down the connection, leaking along microscopic channels into the human's brain.

Things began to flash through Harry's mind: memories that weren't his own. Beautiful cities turned to ash at his command. People screamed and begged for mercy, and he did not grant it. Numbers and equations poured through his mind. He didn't understand a single one of them, but they stayed there, cluttering up his ability to think. He tried to yell for help, but he didn't understand the words coming from his own mouth.

And then the brightness was gone. The pain that had him wishing for death moments earlier was replaced by something indescribably more terrible. He could feel something moving inside his head. The most coherent though Harry could form was that the symbiote was trying to crawl back out.

All we need now is some green puke, O'Neill thought, and for his head to do a 360.

The room echoed with three separate voices, the Goa'uld's low resonating growl, Voldemort's hissing, and some agonizing wails that probably belonged to the kid.

"-out!"

"…vermin…"

"…parasite…"

"…body is mine…"

"…please make it stop!"

The kid started towards the door, stopped, turned toward O'Neill, and stopped again before staggering towards a nondescript section of wall and slamming his own head against it. O'Neill went with his first instincts, which most often were his best ones. He charged across the room and caught the kid in a flying tackle.

They slammed into the floor. The kid shook for a few seconds and then went still. O'Neill pressed a hand to his throat. For half a minute he couldn't find a pulse. O'Neill sat back. He tried to activate the Goa'uld communicator, but it didn't work.

O'Neill rolled the unconscious teenager over. Tentatively he reached out and poked at the back of the kid's neck. He could just barely feel the tail end of the symbiote still wrapped around Harry's neck vertebra. It wasn't moving and seemed oddly squishy. He rolled him back over and found the kid's eyes were open. He was drooling and staring vacantly up at the ceiling. It was definitely not normal Goa'uld behavior at least. He checked his pulse again. It was going a mile a minute, but at least it was still going.

"Kid?" he asked. "Harry? Can you hear me?"

The kid twitched and his eyelids fluttered. O'Neill got hopeful.

"Come on," O'Neill said coaxingly. "We've got to move somewhere safer."

The kid turned his head and groaned and O'Neill got more hopeful.

"I think you're going to have to get up on your own, kid, cause my back is killing me."

The kid opened his mouth and hissed. O'Neill got less hopeful.

Harry's eyes opened revealing black slit pupils in the midst of an iridescent bloody red. O'Neill lunged backwards as the kid's hands shot up, snatching at him. O'Neill got to his feet, shaking. The kid got up, too.

"What's wrong, muggle?" asked the boy in a high, hissing voice.

"Harry?" O'Neill called. "This would be a really good time for your comeback, kid!"

"Potter's not coming back, muggle. He doesn't have the will. It's just you and me now, muggle. And then it is only me."

The kid's face was moving, as if his bones were trying to rearrange themselves. The scar on the kid's forehead sealed itself over with gray, spongy-looking flesh. The discoloration spread, and the kid's nose sank into his face, leaving only two dark slits above his mouth.

O'Neill took another step back. Something clanked under his foot as he took another step back. He saw the ribbon device under his boot and snatched it up, never taking his eyes off of Voldemort…Harry…whoever.

"You think that will protect you from me?" the hissing voice asked.

The face no longer looked like Harry's. The nostrils stretched into slits and his lips melted into nearly colorless flesh.

"Here's hoping," O'Neill muttered, sliding the ribbon device onto hand.

The glaring red eyes were boring into his head.

"You don't even know how it works," Voldemort sneered.

O'Neill could feel the thing clawing its way into his mind. The room flickered and he saw the inside of the biohazard coffin he'd been locked in after Antarctica. He tried to look away from its eyes, but his head wouldn't turn. The lid opened and there were Tok'ra looking down at him.

"Afraid of your own memories?" Voldemort asked in a mocking voice.

O'Neill gave his head a sharp shake and focused his gaze on Voldemort's nose. The crawling sensation persisted.

"If you can remember, you might be able to save yourself," Voldemort continued.

Or you might just snatch the instruction manual out of my head, O'Neill thought.

"That is more then likely," Voldemort hissed.

He waved Harry's hand at O'Neill and the front of his shirt caught fire. He stumbled backwards, slapping at the cloth.

What was Carter always saying about Goa'uld technology? It was all about focus and mental control, and Naquadah in your bloodstream. He raised the device and did his best to focus, but nothing happened. Voldemort made a dismissive gesture and O'Neill was thrown back across the room. He tumbled across the floor and the ribbon device scraped the skin off his palms as he tried to catch himself.

Goddamn piece of junk! O'Neill though. He waved his hand intending to shake the device loose from his fingers. An orange blast of energy slammed into the ceiling above Voldemort's head. O'Neill wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised, but O'Neill got over it faster. He aimed at Voldemort, and pushed with all of his anger. Get the hell away from me!

This time a pressure wave blasted out of the ribbon device, knocking Voldemort off his feet. He was up again a moment later but things were fractionally less one-sided. O'Neill threw another orange blast and scrambled for the door. He tried to sprint down the corridor, but couldn't get much beyond a sort of shambling jog. He passed Bill Weasley, lying motionless on the ground with blood trickling out of his nose and ears. O'Neill couldn't tell if he was still breathing. All that to stop Voldemort from Apparating for thirty seconds.

O'Neill was pretty sure Voldemort was just playing with him. Either that or the kid was somehow throwing him off. He couldn't give up the hope that the kid was still in there somewhere. O'Neill turned the corner, and skidded to a halt. Voldemort was standing in the corridor ahead of him, slightly slouched. He wore a bored expression on a face no longer recognizable as Harry's.

"Crucio!"

It was dark again.

He couldn't think of any other way for things to be, but he knew it hadn't always been dark. He knew nothing about himself except faint echoes of emotions. He thought he should have a name, but it wouldn't come to him.

The pain wasn't there anymore either. He knew it was near. If he tried to do anything, be anything, it would return. But he couldn't stay in the dark. He knew that too.

And he knew he wasn't alone.

There was the one above, causing the pain, and there was the other, in the dark with him, asleep, or at least pretending to be.

The only way to stay away from them was to be nothing. And he would not be nothing.

It started out faintly. A slight pain deep within that he could almost ignore. For a moment Voldemort allowed himself to believe that it was just some stomach problem the boy had. And then it came roaring upward, searing the inside of his head.

Taking control of a body was always painful, but he thought the worst had passed. When Potter had refused to help the Goa'uld and allowed himself to be submerged, Voldemort thought it was over. When souls fell into the darkness they did not return, just as Quirrel had been unable to return, and yet here Potter was, bubbling up again.

Voldemort tried to force him down again. He dug into Potter's memories, upending things so thoughts of loved ones and similar revolting emotions would not be cause interference, but this time it was not emotion that weakened his hold on the body. This time it was will.

He had overlooked it, that night in the graveyard, when he had used the Imperius on Potter and had it thrown back on him. He thought it was his own weakness, the weakness of his newly conjured body that had allowed Potter to overcome it, but now he realized that was not the case. That night the boy had matched his will. And now he was doing it again.

I am Harry James Potter.

His hold on Potter's soul weakened. The spell he cast on the muggle blinked out.

This is my body.

His hold loosened more, and he felt stretched out like gum peeled from the bottom of a shoe. He stretched his senses for another compatible body, but none would allow it. His Death Eaters had died or fled. All but one, and Snape would not let him in.

Get out!

The unlikely roar inside the boy's mind seemed to echo in the physical plane as well. Voldemort's grip snapped.

The pain let up. O'Neill had thrown his arms over his face as he was thrashing around and he really didn't want to remove them. He couldn't help but wonder why so many evil overlords seemed to have it in for him. A foot scuffed against the floor a few feet away. He risked a peek.

Voldemort's hands were pressed over his face, and he was breathing in sharp heaving rasps. O'Neill got to his feet and held up the ribbon device, but he didn't have to use it. He reached out and grabbed Voldemort's hands, prying them away. They weren't Voldemort's hands any more.

The skin on the kid's forehead burst open and a lightning bolt scar zigzagged its way down. Blood ran from the nose that re-erupted from his face and the gray discoloration boiled off his skin. Red eyes looked up at him, but between blinks they turned green.

O'Neill saw it, floating up, a cloud of foul, not-quite smoke. There were faint differences in shading, maybe hints of a human face, and then it was gone, passing through the wall of the ship without substance. For a whole thirty seconds one thought filled his mind.

That damn thing better not have just halfway ascended.

He looked down at the kid who had a death grip on the front of his jacket and was shaking like a caffeinated Chihuahua.

"Are you…by yourself in there now?" O'Neill asked.

The kid nodded. His mouth moved but he didn't speak. O'Neill hoped there wasn't brain damage, but it had not been anyone's lucky day.

"Let's just sit down for a minute, alright?" O'Neill said as his shaking legs gave out.

The kid nodded and sat down next to him. The ship seemed prohibitively quiet and when Charlie Weasley came across them half an hour later, they still had not moved or spoken.

"Over here," Healer Peebles said.

Charlie looked up at the crowd of Jaffa dragging a severely-hexed woman through the door. They were still finding injured people all over the ship. Charlie grabbed some bandages and hurried over to them. It was short but gruesome work turning the woman's arms and legs the right way around. Turning her eyes right side out was a little more work. Charlie really hated retroplex curses. The makeshift hospital was clearing out quickly. In most cases the Jaffa were able to heal themselves, and even the most seriously injured refused to rest before the ship was entirely secured. The old man who'd taken a liking to Professor McGonagall--as well as a blasting hex to the leg--had hobbled out again after barely fifteen minutes of rest. The only ones who stayed down were those unlikely to ever get up again.

Charlie had volunteered to help with the injured after he found his brother. To be honest, he was much more used to patching up creatures with four or more legs and/or wings, but they needed all the help they could get. Bill was still unconscious on a transfigured bed in the corner, but Peebles thought he'd recover from the spell feedback he'd been hit with when Voldemort tried to Apparate through the barrier he'd conjured.

A shadow passed through the doorway. Charlie had halfway drawn his wand when he realized it was Snape.

"How's Harry?" Charlie asked.

The muggles had asked the Potions professor to confirm that Harry was no longer under Goa'uld or Voldemort's control. Snape glared at Charlie through a curtain of greasy hair.

"I neither know nor care. I am here to inform the Healers that the Jaffa believe they have found Dumbledore's remains. Professor McGonagall is viewing them now."

She did not want to look, but Bre'tac's persistent grip on her arm forced her to keep her eyes open. The twisted and scorched room was not so dark as to require his guidance, but neither of them felt the need to be separated.

"Over here," Bre'tac said, pointing with his staff to a lumpy bulge in the wall.

McGonagall raised her wand. "Lumos."

The bulge was the palm of a hand, the curve of the thumb was just visible and four little bumps that likely were fingertips stuck out above it. She leaned in closer and saw that the palm was not flesh, but rather the same material as the wall. It gave no sign of life when she touched it, but she thought she felt something else.

"Is it He?" Bre'tac asked. "This is the room he was last seen in."

"It's Albus," she said.

"I am sorry," Bre'tac said.

Jaffa did not usually say such things when a warrior dies in battle, but he had spent enough time with the Tauri to know it was their custom. McGonagall adjusted her glasses.

"Condolences may not be necessary," she said after a moment.

She touched the wall with her wand and began to weave spell over spell. The wall glowed. Bre'tac watched over her shoulder as the outline of a man formed. It was as if he were looking through a layer of ice instead of trillium alloy. Bre'tac had met Dumbledore only briefly after his arrival, but it was easy enough to recognize him. The wizard inside the wall stood with his feet apart, one hand held forward, as if commanding all before him to halt. The other hand was clenched in a fist.

"What has happened here?" Bre'tac asked.

McGonagall was silent for several seconds. "I didn't think it was possible," she started, "But with Albus…"

She paused again.

"He doesn't have his wand," she said. "Voldemort likely disarmed him since his wand is not apparent. I think…he could not have dodged, nor could he block the killing curse…only Mr.Potter had ever done that. Albus could always do the most amazing things with transfiguration, animate and inanimate transitions and conjuring. I'll need more time to study this, of course…"

"I still do not understand."

"I think Albus attempted to withstand the killing curse by transfiguring himself into something that was not alive, wandlessly as well, apparently. Whatever he was doing didn't go as planned, I expect. But if he got far enough along…I think there is a chance we'll be able to restore him."

O'Neill leaned past the console to look at the kid. Carter and the medics had confirmed that the Goa'uld was dead and being absorbed. The wizards were supposed to see if Voldemort was gone but they kept putting it off. O'Neill didn't know what to think about that. The kid still hadn't said a word since it happened, over five hours ago. He wouldn't sleep, either. The witchdoctors wanted to knock the kid out until they had time for him, but O'Neill didn't think that was such a good idea, so he volunteered to keep an eye on him, not that he was doing much. He was still sitting where they'd left him, leaning against the wall and wrapped in extra coats, still staring blankly into space.

"-and the atmosphere on decks six and seven has stabilized at 750 torr," Carter said, bringing up another graphic on the screen. "The control crystals in the atmospheric processing systems were damaged by resonant interference so we have to run them in series. Also, the power relay on deck six was hit with a staff blast and is only working at 16 efficiency."

O'Neill nodded. He didn't understand most of what she said, and there didn't seem to be much point in her telling him. He couldn't help much in the repair process, besides fetching tools and holding flashlights. He supposed she felt like she had to talk, though. Her hands were still shaking. The witchdoctor said it was a reaction to the "Cruciatius curse". She said they'd just have to wait for it to pass. Still, as O'Neill watched Carter's shaking hands he couldn't entirely suppress the idea that he should reach out and hold them until it stopped.

The com buzzed and Teal'c's face appeared in the sphere embedded in the console.

"We have completed our scans of the lower decks. No further intruders have been encountered. The ship is once again secure."

"I'll pass that along to the President again," said O'Neill. "Third time is the charm, right?"

Teal'c raised an eyebrow, but gave no further response. The connection was severed.

O'Neill was turning back towards Carter for more reports when a there was a dull thump in the hallway. The door slid open and a dead Jaffa floated in, dangling from invisible strings like a puppet. A dead SGC officer and another dead Jaffa followed. Then Lupin floated in, eyes half-open and a confused expression still plastered on his lifeless face. The kid made a funny little whining noise. As a fifth and sixth body floated in the door, O'Neill's brain finally started functioning again.

"The morgue is three corridors down!" he called.

The bodies did a stiff about face in midair, floated back out, and started off down the hall. As the door slid shut after them, he saw Snape walking after them, wand held up like conductor's baton, with a put-upon expression on his face.

"Who gave him that job?" Carter asked.

"McGonagall gave him a choice of doing that, or helping patch up the living. I'm not surprised," O'Neill said, as he leaned past the console to check on the kid again.

"Crap!"

"What?" asked Carter.

"The kid's gone."

Everything was so loud. Every blink set off a cascade of sound inside his head. Every object mentioned brought up a flurry of words, many of which he didn't entirely understand. At least what he saw made sense for the moment. Harry saw Snape using a moblicorpus charm to transport the dead, and he followed him.

Several times Snape turned to look behind him, but Harry simply leaned into the shadows created by the overly ornate architecture of the Goa'uld ship. Joe'mec managed to teach him this in the first few weeks of training. Thinking of the rebel Jaffa set off another wordfall, Shol'va the loudest word among them, but he managed to keep up with Snape anyway. Snape opened up the door of the sarcophagus room, directed the bodies inside and then ended his spell. They landed with dull thumps.

He waited for Snape to Disapparate, probably faster then walking, and then crept to the door. It was locked, but he knew the override code. He knew all the codes. The Tauri woman, Carter, was attempting to reprogram them, but she didn't understand the systems well enough.

Harry stepped into the room. The dead lay about in various positions. Some gently settled with their faces covered, other simply dropped. He found Lupin and pulled him out of under another body. His eyes were open. Harry pushed them closed, but they slid open again. He was very dead, but Harry knew he could do something about that.

I am a god after all, he thought as he pulled open the sarcophagus.

Snape leaned against the door. He could most definitely hear it then, the clink of metal and glass. He pressed the button and the door slid open. The room was filled with casualties, muggles, Jaffa, and three dead wizards, Healer Urslin, Ms. Murdock, and Lupin. The dead Death Eaters had been put in the room across the hall. He supposed they didn't want a fight to break out.

He had finally finished moving corpses and was looking forward to some rest when the muggles raised the alarm. Apparently Potter had wandered off. He destroyed half of wizarding Britain and it still wasn't enough attention for him.

In the center of the room was the huge machine the muggles called the sarcophagus. They claimed it could heal any injury, even raise the dead, when it was working. The clinking came again, and Snape walked around to the far side of it. A pair of feet was hanging out of an open panel. For a moment he thought it was one of the muggles tinkering about, but then he heard a familiar voice muttering. The words were gibberish but it was definitely Potter.

"Come out of there," Snape ordered.

"Ca sho mel, Shol'va!" Potter replied.

Snape was sorely tempted to pull him out with a summoning charm, but he knew McGonagall and the muggles would throw a fit. He went to the panel in the wall and pressed the button as he'd seen the muggles do. He spoke into the grill.

"If anyone cares, Potter is in the morgue."

"What's he doing?" Charlie asked.

"He may be repairing it," Carter said. "If he has any of Ba'al's memories he may know what the Goa'uld did to sabotage it."

"So if he fixes it?"

"Then we may be able to turn back the body count."

"You don't really think the dead can come back, do you?" Charlie asked.

"I have," Carter said.

"What?"

"The technology some of the other races have, some of it is so far beyond us that it looks like magic. In one of SG1's earlier missions we were all killed by Apophis. A staff blast to the chest is a bad way to go, if you were wondering. I felt my heart boil and explode. The next thing I know I'm in a funny little hut and a funny little lady is offering me mangoes."

"But how can Harry know how to fix this thing? I though you said the Goa'uld was dead?"

"It is. But when the symbiote is in your head there is a certain degree of information exchanged. After it's gone you can recall some things."

"You've had one of those Goa'uld in your head too?" Charlie asked.

"A Tok'ra, not a Goa'uld. They're physiologically similar but Tok'ra usually only take voluntary hosts."

"If you had one in your head why couldn't you fix it?" Charlie asked.

He could see the topic was making her uncomfortable, but he needed to know.

"First of all, the Tok'ra don't use the Sarcophagus because they believe it destroys the mind of the host, which it does, after repeated use. Secondly, it took me months to start bringing up Jolanare's memories, and even then they were vague. I don't know how Harry is doing this so fast, but if he remembers how, we are all better off. We have another broken one at the SGC we might be able to fix as well. Of course, then we'd have all sorts of moral problems."

"Like what?" asked Charlie, trying not to look at the dead people all around them.

"If we do get it working, who gets to use it? Even if both work we could never give every sick person on earth access to it, and if they even knew we had it there would be riots over who got cured and who didn't. But at the same time, how could we not use it when thousands of people could be saved? Then again, the Asgard might just solve the problem by taking it away from us. When this is over, I almost hope they do. No one in our government should be playing God."

There was a final clink and Harry crawled backwards out of the machine. His face was smudged and sweaty, but still strangely expressionless. He pushed the panel back into place and pushed a glyph that was still smeared with O'Neill's blood from the day before. The lid slid open and the light came on. Harry stepped away, for a moment seeming disoriented. Then his gaze settled on Lupin's body. He stepped over the other dead to reach it. Charlie wanted to stop him, but Carter passed him. She lifted Lupin's shoulders and Harry got his feet. In silence they carried him to the box.

"Now what?" asked Charlie.

"We wait," Carter answered.

Harry just stared at the box in silence.

The thing that held his attention most strongly was his inability to blink. Of course he noticed the flat, uniformly green lawn that stretched beneath him, from one ideally blue horizon to the other. He noticed the blue sky held no sun, or any other source of light. He noticed the woman dressed in white standing a few yards away as well, but his inability to blink was at the forefront of all other perceptions.

What's wrong with me? He thought.

"You have died," said the woman.

I'm not dead. He thought, and realized he couldn't speak either.

"You have died."

If I'm dead, then why am I still…he looked down and saw nothing but green grass beneath him; no body, no feet, not even a shadow. What happened to me?

"You have died."

That's not exactly helpful information.

"I can not help you until you accept that you have died. Only then can you move on, and become what you were and truly are."

Well, sorry to put you off but I am not dead. I don't want to be dead.

"What you want matters little at this stage. If you wish for your will to affect reality, you must move on and become what you were."

If I move on, I'll become human again?

"You will become what you were."

I'll be a werewolf again?

"You will become what you were before."

This isn't making any sense.

"You will understand when you move on."

Well, I can't just move on if I don't know where I'm going.

"I can tell you nothing more. I am only here to tell you to move on and not back."

So there is a way back?

"Part of you can go back, but you will never again be what you were."

I'll be a ghost? Not human?

"If you go back you will be human, and only that."

Then I'm going back.

"You will regret it."

I don't think so.

"Then there is nothing more for me to say."

You're not going to tell me how to get out of this place, are you?

"You aren't in a place. You are in a human."

You mean I am a human.

"You are now."

I've always been human. I'm Remus Lupin. Perhaps you had me confused with someone else.

The woman looked blankly at him and then vanished. The lawn and sky began to fade away, replaced by a colorless light.

"May you find the path as Remus Lupin, then," her disembodied voice said.

He blinked and felt a hard surface under his back. The light faded and the sky above him split open, revealing a ceiling. Familiar faces appeared above him.

"Remus?" asked Charlie Weasley.

"I-" he croaked. Something felt wrong. He moved his fingers and toes. They all seemed to be in working order.

"I feel wrong," he said.

Another face popped into view. It took him a minute to recall the woman's name: Carter.

"That'll go away in a few hours," Carter assured him.

Remus sat up with great effort and many hands helped lift him out of the strange box he had been lying in. There were dead people on the floor all around it. He tripped over someone's arm as he was lead into the hall. Harry was walking with them a few feet to the left. His face was blank. Remus looked back and saw Carter lifting another of the dead men into the box. The lid slid closed.

"I feel wrong," he said again.

"I'll take you to see the Healers," Charlie said.

Lupin nodded and Charlie grabbed his elbow and led him out of the room.

"Remus?" McGonagall called as she rushed through the door.

She couldn't help the smile that split her face. When Severus had told her he was dead she felt as if she'd been kicked in the chest. Now she was nearly floating. Remus sat on a conjured bed across from Healer Peebles. He did not look up when she repeated his name. Instead the healer stood up and crossed the room to her, catching her sleeve and guiding her away from Remus, who looked at his own hands and said nothing.

"What's wrong?" McGonagall asked in a low voice.

"You've known this man a long time?" Heeler Peebles asked.

McGonagall nodded. "Since he was eleven."

"I need you to ask him some personal questions, things only the real Mr. Lupin would know."

"Is there…is there some reason to believe this is not…Mr. Lupin?"

"Mr. Lupin was born a wizard, was he not?"

McGonagall did not know what to say. She looked over at the bed again.

"He was unable to perform a levitation charm. I thought it may have been shock so I used further diagnostic spells. This man has no magic."

"Are…are you certain?"

Peebles nodded. "And I know of no spell that could make a wizard into a muggle."

But we know of a spell that could make a wizard into a corpse, McGonagall thought. And another that can make a corpse walk around. McGonagall turned and walked over to Remus. She conjured herself up a chair and sat down across from him. He continued to look at his hands.

"Remus? Do you know me?" she asked.

He nodded.

"When did we first meet?"

He looked up then. His eyes were almost expressionless, but she thought she saw a hint of him still in them.

"We met on the train. Sirius had started a fight with Bellatrix and you had to apparate in when a prefect got hexed. They told me Bellatrix was dead. They told me I was dead. Maybe that's why I don't feel so well."

"I'm sure it will get better," McGonagall said. "The muggles said the machine always makes you feel awful. Do you remember the muggle's names?"

"There's Daniel Jackson, and Carter, O'Neill, Siler, Walter, I don't remember the others…Teal'c but he's a Jaffa."

"What's the last thing you remember?" McGonagall asked. She was getting off-topic, but the curiosity was killing her.

"The woman in white. She said I wouldn't be myself any more."

"Bellatrix?" McGonagall asked.

"No, the woman. It was green everywhere and she said I should go on."

"Remus, what are you…?"

"Maybe I shouldn't have told her no. I want to sleep now. I'm tired. Please let me rest."

McGonagall nodded and stood up. The Healer looked questioningly at her.

"He knows who he is," McGonagall said. "But he doesn't seem himself."

"I suppose we'll have to wait and see," said the Healer.

McGonagall nodded. She risked a last backward glance at Remus, who had sort of tipped over sideways on the bed, rather then lay down. As soon as she was clear of the door she raised her wand and Apparated. The sarcophagus room appeared around her. Charlie, Harry, Carter, and Daniel Jackson were standing around the large golden box, with arms crossed and pensive expressions on their faces. There were only three more corpses in the room, all of them Jaffa.

"Has something happened?" McGonagall asked.

She wondered where Healer Urslin and Ms. Murdock were. They should have been brought to Healer Peebles immediately. Daniel Jackson adjusted his glasses before looking at her.

"I don't know if it's a problem, exactly," Daniel said. "We've had two ascensions in the past five minutes, so we thought we'd stop for a moment."

"Ascensions?" McGonagall asked. "Where are Healer Urslin and Ms. Murdock?"

"On a higher plain of existence, we assume," Jackson said.

"What?" McGonagall asked, looking to Charlie.

"We put Healer Urslin in the sarcophagus and turned it on. All the other times it worked, but that time a sort of…well I would call it a cross between an angel and a glowing octopus…sort of floated up out through the lid and disappeared through the ceiling. When we opened the box there was no body."

"Does this happen often?" McGonagall asked.

"No," Daniel said. "You have to die to ascend. If the sarcophagus has activated it shouldn't be possible. When I ascended, I had to get Jack to stop them from saving me."

"So they'll ascend and come back?" McGonagall asked.

"Only if they're bad," Daniel said. "But they shouldn't have been able to go at all with the sarcophagus turned on."

"Was it only the witches who ascended?" McGonagall asked.

Daniel nodded. "We put a Jaffa in next and she was healed normally. I was going to try it with one of the Death Eater casualties but Harry seemed to be against that idea."

McGonagall looked at Harry. "He spoke?"

"In Goa'uld," Daniel said, frowning deeply. "Has Lupin said anything…uh…strange?"

McGonagall recounted Lupin's words.

"What does it mean?" asked Carter.

After a thoughtful moment Daniel said "I'm going to have to shrug here."