A/N: Blah blah, some trite shit about how grateful I am to have people who enjoy my story enough to read it and review. I'm actually writing this before I know how well the first chapter was received, so all that second chapter "Thank you so much for reading!" bullcrap wouldn't really work here.

Anyway, here's chapter 2!

Major General George Hammond was not Harry's friend. Oh, the man had been nice enough during their initial meeting, and had even personally escorted Harry on a detailed tour of the base. But one little detail that the general had failed to mention when Harry agreed to stick around was that suddenly, Harry was working with the military. This meant there was a very strict chain of command and Harry, who was for all intents and purposes a highly specialized civilian consultant, answered directly to the man in charge...one Major General George Hammond.

Really, that wouldn't have been an issue, but it had been forever since Harry had worked with anything resembling a military, and he'd forgotten just how...demanding they were. After the tour of the base, the general had introduced him to a woman with close-cropped blonde hair named Samantha Carter and all but ordered the two of them to exchange their knowledge and understandings of magic with one another. Apparently Samantha (who was okay just being called Sam) knew more than anyone else on Earth about alien technology, and made a hobby out of dabbling with the less dangerous alien devices they came across. In short, she was the one all the local jocks turned to when they needed a science-y explanation for something, and she filled that role quite nicely.

After a 5-hour long brain picking session with Sam, Harry had managed to politely ask where he would be sleeping and before collapsing into his bed, exhausted. He didn't even bother to set up wards, he was so tired. This proved to be a mistake, as he was woken up at 7:30 sharp by an airman 'requesting' that he grab a quick bite to eat before going to see General bloody Hammond to talk about the probe he'd mentioned yesterday. The meeting lasted about for about a half-hour, and then the general 'suggested' that Harry talk more on the matter with Sam, and Harry found himself being dragged back down into a laboratory chalk filled with gadgets and do-dads where he was enthusiastically encouraged to show off his magic so that Sam could run some tests. By this point, Harry was irritated enough that he didn't bother to warn her that the majority of her gadgets and do-dads would break if he used his magic near them. And so, after a lot of short-circuiting and an entirely insincere apology on Harry's part, he was dragged off to an different underground lab, put in a Faraday cage, and told to try again.

By this point, he really just wanted to find a quiet place with no overenthusiastic blondes, sit down, and ponder exactly where he had gone wrong, so Harry took great pleasure in the shock on Sam's face as fried her sensors right through the cage. And he also fried the sensor she'd put inside the cage in the hopes that it might be able to survive exposure to magic at close range, just to prove that he could.

Unfortunately, his victory was hollow, as Sam decided to go back to the previous days's approach and ask him all of the questions. Harry had researched the nature of magic pretty much full-time for over three centuries, and even he didn't have answers to all of Sam's questions. The woman was insatiable!

After a brief lunch break that Harry had to not-so-subtly suggest five bloody times, Sam returned to her original lab and started fiddling with her broken sensors. And then she had the nerve to ask Harry if he could help her fix them! Not wishing to offend the woman who undoubtedly knew more than anyone else on the base about the Stargate, Harry politely refused to help her and slipped away to find some peace and quiet.

At first, he merely retreated to his room, but the concrete walls made him feel a bit trapped. So he posted a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on his door, set up wards strong enough to keep anything short of a tank from getting through the walls of his room, and quietly apparated away to the park in Little Whinging. It was the first place that came to mind that Harry figured would be about the same in this new world; and more importantly it was a mostly green, natural place where mankind met nature and, to an extent, coexisted. This park had never really been a refuge to Harry, as it was the stomping grounds of Dudley's gang, but it was the place where he and Dudley had been attacked by dementors together. In the many years after that incident, Harry and Dudley had come to a sort of understanding with each other about their whole life, and Harry personally traced their ability to finally get along with each other back to this simple park. It was a peaceful place, the park, especially when there weren't any dementors around. Looking at it now, Harry could understand Fudge's incredulity at his teenage self's story. Dementors? Here? That really didn't make sense without someone like Umbridge involved.

Harry took a deep, cleansing breath in, and then let it out in a long sigh. If he could come to terms with Dudley, he could come to terms with General Hammond. He just needed to go about it right. Hammond would be much simpler to understand, comparatively. Harry just needed some time to collect his thoughts before he dove back into the well-structured chaos that was the SGC.

And so Harry sat in the grass beneath a tree, cast the familiar meditation spells on himself, and allowed himself to slip into a deep trance as he considered everything he'd learned about his current situation.

Approximately one day later, Harry opened his eyes, took a deep breath in...and let out a violent sneeze. Startled abruptly from his meditative trance, Harry shot to his feet, habitually drawing his wand and then pointing it wildly at his surroundings.

Then his brain caught up with his body, and he noticed what had caused his sudden awakening. He'd been sitting under a pine tree, a Jefferson Pine by the smell. The tree had dropped several pollen pods on him as he meditated, and one had broken on his head. The resulting puff of pollen had, predictably, provoked a very violent reaction from Harry's nasal passage, violent enough to upset even his deep meditation. Harry shook his head. This was why those monks liked to meditate in monasteries, he realized. It was harder for the real world to interrupt one's meditation when one surrounded oneself self with walls and like-minded souls.

Still, if he was reading the stars right, a whole day had passed already, and he needed to get back to the SGC before they got too worried about him. With a soft crack, Harry apparated back to his room. Extending his senses briefly, he smiled. They hadn't even touched his wards. For all they knew, he'd been hiding in his room, not fleeing across the Atlantic to clear his head.

Smiling pleasantly at that thought, Harry opened his door and came face-to-face with some sort of jury-rigged scanner that had been pointed at his door. His smile faded. They hadn't managed to breach his wards, but of course they were putting them under a microscope. From the technology Harry had seen in Sam's lab, they'd probably never encountered anything quite like the wards he'd raised around his room.

Looking around carefully, Harry was pleased to note that Sam was nowhere to be seen. At least he didn't have to deal with more endless questions about the methods he'd used to finally catch a break from her endless questions. That would have been awkward.

Deciding that he needed to make a bit of a statement, Harry apparated loudly up to the briefing room. It was empty, and the door connecting it to General Hammond's office was closed. Still, Harry could see the general sitting at his desk, looking cautiously out the window in an attempt to determine what the loud crack of Harry's apparation had been. Harry met the man's eyes and gave him a Look.

The general, to his credit, decided to come out of his office to talk to Harry. "Harry, we've been worried about you-" he began, but Harry cut him off.

"General Hammond, I am not upset. I am irritated, and I think that with a little discussion about boundaries, we can resolve the issue. But that will require both of us to reach an honest compromise. Do you understand that?"

Hammond's face fell, but he gestured into his office. "I think I do, Harry. Let's sit down and talk about it."

Harry noted idly that the general would probably feel more comfortable having this talk in his office, but he decided to indulge the man. After all, the whole complex was technically the man's home turf. It wouldn't hurt Harry to enter the general's office.

After the two men sat down, a staring contest ensued as Harry tried to read the general's intentions, and Hammond tried to do the same to Harry. After two full minutes of this, Harry broke the silence.

"I don't know how many dealings you've had with people like me, General, but I can tell that what few you have had weren't terribly extensive. Do you care to take a guess at how I know this?"

Hammond looked surprised at the question, but carefully considered it before answering. "It's as you say. The only advanced race of beings we've ever had extended diplomatic relations with is the Asgard, and they have their own issues to deal with."

"General," Harry chided, "you've avoided the question. Why have the other races you've encountered refused to help you?"

Hammond's brow furrowed deeply as the experienced general considered a very carefully pointed question.

"Well," General Hammond said, "I've gotten the impression from the various advanced races we've encountered that they don't think we're...ready for their technology."

Harry nodded agreeably. "You aren't, in all likelihood. In fact, if you treated the Asgard anything like you treated me, I'm very impressed that they kept up diplomatic relations with you at all."

Harry knew phrasing his sentiment in this fashion would offend the general, but he wanted to see just how the commander of the SGC would respond when he was figuratively pushed around a bit in his own office.

"And just what, exactly, do you mean by that?" General Hammond asked threateningly, shifting slightly in his chair in what was probably an attempt to subtly intimidate Harry.

"What I mean by that, General Hammond, is that you set Miss Carter on me like a hound, and she's not given me a moment of peace since you did. I am not known for my temper, but two full days of exposure to that kind of questioning would try even the most patient of men! I came here to work with you, General, and you seem to instead be trying to make me work for you. Can you see why that might upset me?"

The General's eyes flashed dangerously, but then, remarkably, the man backed down and slumped into his chair before looking up to stare Harry directly in the eyes. Harry met his gaze evenly.

"You're testing us, aren't you?" he finally asked.

Harry smiled. "Yes, General Hammond, I am. And while I must say that you're a little rough around the edges, I think with a few years of hard work you could easily be ready to share in all of the knowledge that I've picked up over the years. But you must understand, General, that it took me several centuries to get where I am today. Even if I help ease you into it, you won't be ready or even able to learn everything I know all at once."

Hammond looked as though he was trying to hide his disappointment. "So…what are you saying?"

"What I'm saying, General, is that I came here to study the wormhole device you call the Stargate, and in the last 72 hours I haven't even been given a chance to get near the thing. If you want me to stick around and help you out, you need to hold up your end of the bargain."

Hammond's face fell. "That's...not as easy as you might think. I do command the men in this base, but I simply don't have final say when it comes to strangers messing with the Stargate. And quite frankly, I don't yet trust you enough to let you mess with our Stargate even if I did. You must understand that we can't take a risk like that when we don't even know you."

That gave Harry pause. He'd been under the impression that Hammond's word was law on the base, because even the lowly airman in the embarkation room jumped to follow his orders. But apparently if Harry really wanted to get his hands on the Stargate, he'd need to commit to a long-term mutual relationship with the SGC and hope that they came to trust him after a while.

"General Hammond, it wasn't three days ago that you said your superiors would bend over backwards just to keep me here. And while I understand that you were telling the truth, I can't help but feel like I was being deceived. So perhaps we should start again, and you should tell me why I shouldn't just use your Stargate to leave this planet behind and seek out Ancient technology on my own."

Harry wasn't willing to spend time building a relationship with this version of Earth unless they were willing to extend him a little trust. Sure, he could force the matter and just Imperiurize the lot of them, but Harry avoided the Imperius curse on general principle. Besides, the Imperius really wasn't a necessary evil when there was a whole network of Stargates to study and only a few unprepared muggles standing between him and the rest of the galaxy. Hell, Harry was alone with their leader right now, with a well-placed compulsion and a touch of charm, he could be on his way to see the galaxy in minutes. And yet...Harry felt like this particular General didn't deserve that kind of treatment, so he had decided to offer the man a second chance, hidden in a slight challenge to the man's authority.

Hammond took his time in responding to Harry's challenge. It was clearly only just occurring to the man that Harry might very well decide to leave the base, and that Harry also didn't think they'd be able to stop him.

Eventually, the general stood from his chair and extended his hand to Harry. "If we're going to start over, I think we should start from the very beginning, with introductions. I am Major General George Hammond, and I'm the leader of the Stargate Command."

Harry grinned, stood, and shook the General's hand. "It's a pleasure, General Hammond. My name is Harry Potter, and I'm a wizard from an Earth that's rather different to yours. I think that maybe, with some work, we'll be able to get along."

A/N: Whew. That was an intense negotiation scene! I'm really glad that I'm not General Hammond right now, because I am nowhere near as competent a leader as he is, and I'd never be able to pull off a negotiation like that with a person like Harry.

But hey, that's why I'm the author, and not a Four Star General in the Air Force who was supposed to retire before all of this shit started flying everywhere. Erm…that sentence got away from me. Whoops.

It's a shorter chapter today, but that's because it didn't take 5,000 words to get Harry and the SGC cooperating with each other, it only took 2,700 words. My chapters will be as long as they need to be, and no longer. I will also post them as soon as I've gotten a good night's sleep and looked them over one last time. This is just how I'm writing my story, and that's how this is going to be whether you like it or not, Mr. Anonymous Flaming Guest.

That's right, you. You know who you are.

Best of wishes,

~feauxen