A/N: As one memorable guest reviewer said, "It lives!" No, this story's not dying any time soon. It won't end until there's peace in the Pegasus Galaxy. How long it will take for there to be peace in the Pegasus Galaxy...well, that I don't actually know yet, especially if we're talking real-world time here. In-story I have a bit more of an idea what's going on. ;P

Harry woke very slowly. As he tried to make sense of his surroundings, he felt a certain…swimming sensation, as though he were floating in the ocean. But he could still feel the mattress beneath him, and when he opened his eyes he saw the empty infirmary. The infirmary...wait. Which infirmary was this again?

Inter, have I been drugged? Harry asked blearily.

Inter gave the mental equivalent of a snort. I think Janet got sick of you waking up when you weren't supposed to. You've been just shy of catatonic for a few days now.

Oh. That's right. The SGC. The Goa'uld. The Alteran drone weapon. His own overly-effective 'distraction' weapon. The pain of a near-miss from capital ship-grade weaponry. Well, Harry mused, at least we won.

"Are you awake, Harry?" Janet's voice penetrated his thoughts.

Harry glanced over at the approaching Doctor. "Ugh, no thanks to you. I hear you nearly put me into a coma."

"What? Where did you hear that?" Janet asked.

Oh boy, Inter commented, you really are out of it, aren't you? You're not usually this free with your secrets. And I'm not usually this talkative. I think the drugs are affecting me through the neural link.

"Damn," Harry said aloud. "I...Janet...I'll tell you about it later. Need to flush these damn drugs out of my system first, they're making my mind fuzzy."

"You should be unconscious with all the morphine in your system," Janet said primly, "If you hadn't warned me that wizards metabolize drugs differently I would be alarmed that you're even conscious right now. As it is, I can't help but wonder how you overheard the nurses talking about your condition while you were in a nearly catatonic state."

"It's like I said, wizards don't work quite the same as muggles," Harry said, slowly pushing himself into a sitting position. And then it hit him. "Wait...my back doesn't hurt."

Janet actually laughed at that. "I've taken you off of your drugs because you're now healed enough to get up and move around without re-injuring yourself. You might feel a little delicate once the morphine wears off, and you shouldn't do anything physically strenuous for at least two weeks. But the wounds on your back have closed up, for the most part, and they're well on their way to fully healing. As long as you don't get yourself blown up again, you should be fully recovered."

Harry held his face in his hands and groaned. "I suppose you definitely won't believe me if I try to say that I really won't blow myself up this time?"

Chuckling lightly, Janet raised her clipboard. "Not a chance. Now, how are you feeling?"

Harry stared at her in disbelief. "How do you think? I feel like my brain is made of wet cotton and I'm still getting used to the fact that I've been in a drugged-up coma for the better part of a week."

Janet tilted her head curiously. "You were aware of the passing time?"

Harry sighed. "No. It's...complicated."

"If you feel up to explaining I must admit I'm curious," Janet said, "The ability to recall things that happened while you yourself were so deeply unconscious could prove invaluable, if you're willing to share it."

"Well…" Harry trailed off, considering whether or not he should share details about Inter. In the end, he figured it couldn't hurt. "It's not really what you're thinking, actually. Do you remember the database I created for O'Neill?" Janet nodded. "The one I created for myself is...well, it's sort of tucked away in my head. It keeps track of time better than I do, even when I'm unconscious. It also...well, it's actually how I knew you'd drugged me so much. It can monitor my health, to a degree, and it told me it thought you'd gotten sick of me waking up when I was supposed to be asleep. Little bugger sounded pretty amused about the whole thing, actually." Harry felt his face redden in embarrassment. Damn drugs were loosening his tongue.

"Your...database...said that?" Janet asked hesitantly, "Is it alive?"

Harry's head fell back into his hands. "I shouldn't have told you about...its opinions. That's...a whole can of worms I prefer not to get into." Quickly gathering his thoughts, and feeling Inter attempt to reinforce his rational mind, Harry attempted to explain. "He...I call the interface...Inter. It's not alive exactly, but...it's sort of got a personality. I think that's because I put so many of my own memories in it, and they rubbed off or something. It used to be much more...robotic, but now...well, Inter is almost sassy."

Janet took a moment to come to terms with that. "And…why didn't this…Inter show up in any of your X-rays or MRIs?"

"Because there's so much magic in my body that you probably didn't notice the artificial fold in space that I tucked him into. It...I can try to explain the science behind that to Sam later, if you want."

"I see." Janet said, pausing to write several notes on her clipboard. When she finished, she looked up.

"Well...other than that how are you feeling? Are you in any pain?"

Harry laughed mirthlessly. "I think I've still got too much morphine in me for that. Come back in an hour, I'll tell you how I'm really feeling."

…

Two hours later, Harry had been released from the infirmary, conditional on a daily checkup. Janet still wasn't completely convinced that he'd processed all of the morphine in his system, but she couldn't argue with multiple cognitive tests and a blood sample. In the end she decided that it was yet another reason he would need to come back for regular check-ups. Harry had resigned himself to smiling and nodding at confused nurses and doctors long before he'd even left his own reality, so he accepted Janet's confusion with equanimity.

Once he was free of the infirmary, Harry collected the remains of his robes, dressed himself in the Air Force coveralls Janet had given him, and then made his way to Sam's laboratory.

When he arrived, Harry saw that, as usual, Sam was surrounded by gadgets and complicated tools she no doubt used for disassembling and studying said gadgets.

"What are you looking at this time?" he asked.

Sam glanced up at him, no longer surprised by his sudden questions about her work. "Just something SG-10 picked up on P3X-213 a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure it's dead, but it looks like it might have been based on Ancient engineering. Or Alteran engineering, I guess. That's going to take some getting used to."

"Don't need my help with this one then?" Harry asked.

"No." Sam finished her metallic surgery, holding the complex bit of circuitry she'd just removed from the dead device up to the light. "This one shouldn't be too hard to figure out." She set the piece of circuitry next to the device and laid down her tools. "So, what do you need?"

Harry held up the remains of his robes. "I need a new set of robes, and I thought you might like to watch how I go about weaving them. It should help you with your warding project, since it involves a lot of defensive runic work. I'll even give you these old rags once I've gotten the extra-dimensional pocket emptied out."

Sam stared almost hungrily at the robes. "The...extra-dimensional pocket? Does that mean…?"

"Yes, it does." Harry flicked his wrist at the sleeve, then frowned. That should have shot his wand out. "It seems that is was damaged in the orbital strike, but fortunately it's little more than a sort of 'portal' into a pocket of space where I store things like my wand and whatever other useful bits and bobs I find. The first order of business is going to be fixing that portal, since most of what I need to make a new set of robes is in that pocket space."

"Can you teach me how this...extra-dimensional portal works?" Sam asked eagerly.

Harry smiled. "When you've figured out why you shouldn't call hyperspace 'subspace,' we can talk. For now, I'll let you watch as I stitch up the rune work. You should have enough questions about that to keep yourself plenty occupied."

"All right then," Sam said, "give me a few minutes to tidy up here, and I'll meet you in your lab."

"I'll see you there."

…

When Sam walked into Harry's lab, she looked quite surprised. To be fair, that was a pretty reasonable reaction, because at that moment Harry was using his wand as a conductor's baton to carefully control all of the various objects floating about in his lab. And said objects were quite surprising on their own, never mind their current ignorance of gravity's eternal demands. The specially-enchanted sword was fairly self-explanatory, but the same couldn't be said about the silvery metal blob that swished past Sam's head as she entered the room, or many of the other odd bits and bobs that Harry had picked up over the years.

As it had turned out, the only reason that Harry hadn't been able to retrieve his wand earlier was because it had been lying, forgotten, in his lab. He'd discovered this rather embarrassing fact upon re-entering his lab and noticing it lying on the floor. In the confusion of waking up after the battle, Harry had completely forgotten about his wand and left it behind on his way to the infirmary. The extra-dimensional sleeve, on the other hand, was still working well enough that he could summon out the contents and take inventory, so he'd started that process as he waited for Sam.

"Hey Sam," Harry greeted her, "Turns out the extra-dimensional pocket wasn't as broken as I thought. I'm just sorting through all the junk I kept in there; I'll be with you in a moment."

Sam stared in awe as Harry vanished several objects of the 'seemed like a good idea to keep at the time' variety and carefully stacked the rest in a corner.

"What...what was that?" Sam asked, "What did you do with those things that disappeared?"

Harry grinned. He loved confronting scientists with the nonsensicality of magic. "No, I obliterated them from existence. It's a spell I was taught when I was 13 years old, though thankfully it's in a class of spells that simply don't work on animate objects and beings."

"You...obliterated them. From existence."

"Yep. We call it the vanishing charm."

"And you can just...do that."

"Yep." Harry nodded.

"And it doesn't cause a devastating explosion of energy comparable to a nuclear bomb."

"Nope."

"...huh."

Wait, that's it? "You know," Harry said aloud, "you aren't nearly as surprised as I expected you to be."

"I travel through a stable wormhole to other planets, and that's just my day job," Sam stated bluntly, "After a while, you learn to just accept the impossible and go with the flow."

Well that's no fun. Harry very nearly pouted. "Anyway, you're here to watch me craft a magical robe," he said, conjuring several long, loose cotton strands "so what do you say we get down to business?"

Harry found guiding Sam through the process of weaving a magical robe rather exhausting. As usual, she was full of questions, most of which were surprisingly insightful. To her dismay, Harry didn't tell her exactly how the enchantments he wove into the fabric worked, just what they did. But what Sam was most interested in were the runes. In an effort to accommodate her, Harry frequently stopped his process to show Sam the runic form of the enchantments he was weaving into the thread as he spun the fibers together, and then the combinations of enchantments he created as he wove the thread into fabric, and finally the black-on-black runes he wove into the surface of the robe itself.

"Basically," Harry summarized, "this robe will keep me clean, comfortable, warm, and dry at all times. And on top of that it's more bulletproof than kevlar, as flexible as silk, stretchier than rubber when it needs to be, enchanted specifically so that it won't get in the way of any acrobatics I might attempt, and it even billows dramatically if I'm in the mood for that. You just can't beat the customizability of enchanting a robe from start to finish, and the fact that the thread is made from conjured strands just makes it even easier to work with."

"...wow." Sam breathed, slowly taking in the list of feats she would likely have thought impossible for a mere garment before watching Harry literally weave them into his robe. "And that isn't even everything, is it? There were runes you didn't explain in there, and probably some enchantments too."

Harry smiled. "Good eye you've got there, Sam. And yes, I didn't just show you all of my tricks, but you must understand that just as the SGC can't possibly fully trust me yet, I can't fully trust any of you. Of all the people I've interacted with, I definitely trust you the most, Sam, but I would still expect you to follow orders and divulge what you've seen here. I was even counting on it, actually. We're in the early stages of...I guess you could call this an alliance of sorts, and teaching you about my robes was meant as a gesture of goodwill."

"A gesture of goodwill where you're openly keeping secrets?"

"Sam, no alliance I've ever been a part of has ever involved full disclosure," Harry said. "For one thing, it would simply take too long for you and I to sit down and discuss all of our secrets with each other. But I would also hope that it isn't necessary. If I know something that you and the SGC need to be aware of, I'll tell you. In return, I hope you and the SGC will extend me the same courtesy. It's just...well, there's a lot of politics involved in this situation, no matter how much you and I might dislike them."

Sam sighed. "Isn't there some way to just...I don't know, bypass the politics?"

"Bypass the politics?" Harry chuckled at that. "I wish it were that easy, Sam, but during relatively peaceful times like this, politics are all we've got. If it helps, I give you my solemn vow that I'll deal with the people of this Earth truthfully and honestly, but I definitely can't avoid the politicians. Your President already wants to meet with me, and I'm essentially working as a consultant for the Air Force. There's no way to do that without getting mired in politics."

"Indeed, though we might desperately wish to escape them, politics make the world go 'round," a voice came from the doorway of the lab.

Turning, Harry saw Dr. Weir standing there, apparently having heard some of the conversation. "Well," he said with some amusement, "speak of the devil and she will appear."

Dr. Weir quirked an eyebrow. "Am I that bad?"

Harry laughed out loud. "No, of course not, Doctor! It's a joke. A bit of humor to lighten these dark times. We defeated Anubis, surely we can enjoy a good joke!"

The corners of Dr. Weir's mouth slipped upwards. "Well, I can hardly argue with that. I've never been much good at it myself, but a decent joke can do more good than a whole afternoon of peace talks." Dr. Weir's near-smile faded. "Unfortunately, I'm here to discuss that meeting with the President that you were talking about. He's open tomorrow at 7PM, Eastern Time, if that works for you."

Harry considered that. "It's not exactly like I'm busy here. I can make time for the most powerful man in the free world. How much time do you think I should allow for getting through security?"

"Oh, 30 minutes at most. The process is quite streamlined for personal visitors to the Oval Office. But I do feel I should warn you that Vice President Kinsey will be at the meeting as well. In light of your...actions, the Vice President seems to want to turn over a new leaf."

Harry carefully avoided expressing his doubts about that out loud. Kinsey probably just wanted to sucker up to Harry now that he'd advertised a military application for his skills. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind, Doctor. Thank you for the forewarning."

Dr. Weir nodded in acknowledgement. "Well, I suppose I'll leave you two to it, unless you had anything you wanted to talk to me about."

Harry glanced at Sam, then said, "Actually, we were just finishing up here. It might be advantageous for you and Sam to discuss what she's learned right away, while it's still fresh."

Sam actually snorted at that. "You just want us to leave you alone so you can sort out your trinkets, don't you?"

"Oh, Sam," Harry said, pretending to be hurt, "you know me too well."

Sam rolled her eyes at him. "We'll leave you to sort your toys, then."

"Hey," Harry objected weakly as the two blondes turned to leave, "they're not toys, they're incredibly awesome gadgets that can do things beyond your wildest imagination!"

The two women exchanged a knowing glance, and then Weir said, "Well…we'll just leave you to your 'incredibly awesome gadgets' then, Mr. Potter. Enjoy yourself...and try not to have too much fun."

And with that, they left, closing the door behind them. Harry stared after them, speechless. Dr. Weir had said that she was terrible with jokes, but had she been...teasing him? Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Harry turned to the stack of incredibly awesome gadgets in the corner. One of them warbled suspiciously.

"Oh come on," Harry said, "don't give me that."

A suspicious silence followed his proclamation.

"Oh, sod it all," Harry muttered to himself. Now he was talking to them despite being...fairly certain none of his gadgets could properly respond to human speech. That probably wasn't a good sign.

Harry checked with Inter. 6:55 PM, Eastern US time local. He idly straightened his robes, wondering how the meeting he was about to enter would go. On the one hand, he'd heard good things about President Hayes. On the other hand...Kinsey. It would be interesting to see how the two interacted with each other. From what Harry could tell, their agendas were likely to come into conflict regarding his treatment. Kinsey would want to exploit Harry in any and every way possible, but President Hayes would likely want to build an amicable relationship. At that thought, the wizard grinned to himself. This was going to be fun.

In front of him, the curved door to the oval office opened. Several men and one woman, all wearing neatly-tailored suits and completely impassive expressions, walked out. None of them sparing the waiting wizard so much as a glance. A woman with a vaguely secretarial look about her closed the door behind them, but Harry could tell she took note of his presence. Sure enough, not even a full minute later she exited the Oval Office herself, pausing only to say, "The President and Vice President will see you now," before going off about her business.

Harry didn't pause to look around the Oval Office. He'd seen it enough to know about what to expect, so instead of taking in the sights, he looked at the people he was there to meet. President Hayes, of course, sat behind his desk, a friendly smile on his face. Kinsey, by contrast, glared at Harry from his position directly to the left of the President.

Harry smiled. "Now now Mr. Kinsey, is that any way to look at a man who helped save your life?"

If anything, Kinsey's expression soured further. "You were saving your own hide as much as anyone else's, I'm sure."

Harry laughed out loud at that. "Oh, I could have left any time I wanted. If you think the SGC is capable of stopping me from using your 'Stargate' you're sadly mistaken. And that's not accounting for the fact that leaving this reality, and by extension this planet, doesn't require anything more than five minutes of my time. No, Mr. Kinsey, I'm afraid my decision to stay and fight wasn't entirely a selfish one."

Kinsey looked ready to respond, but the President cut him off. "That's enough, Bob. We're here to talk to Mr. Potter, not rake him over the coals."

Bob? Harry struggled to hide his surprise. He wouldn't have expected a man like Kinsey to go by such a common name. "I glad to hear that, Mr. President. I'm not especially fond of being raked over the coals, as it were."

Kinsey's expression became even worse, if it was possible. The Vice President probably didn't like being called by his first name in such a high-profile meeting. To his credit, however, he refrained from commenting.

"So," Harry said, "Why am I here? I know I have a lot I'd like to talk to you about, Mr. President, but it was you who issued the summons."

The President smiled widely. "Well first off Mr. Potter, I'd like to thank you for all of your efforts in the recent battle with the Goa'uld. From the sound of it you got quite banged up defending this planet, and as one of the many leaders of this world I'd like to extend my gratitude toward you. If you need a favor or three, don't hesitate to ask. George had a lot of good things to say about you, and I hope I can look forward to working with you moving forward."

Harry took a moment to let that sink in. "I assume that you're talking about General Hammond? I didn't know the two of you were so close."

The President let out an easy laugh. "Oh, George and I go way back. We served together, once upon a time. He asked me to thank you, by the way. He was in command of the Prometheus, and he told me to tell you that he has you to thank for the lives of his men once again."

Harry inclined his head, accepting the indirect thanks. "Well I would be delighted if we could start building an amicable relationship. From what I've been hearing around the SGC, they've been after an Alteran city for some time now, and that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. In fact, I don't mind saying that it's pretty much become my raison d'être for…longer than I care to admit."

That caught the President's attention. "Oh? And what do you mean by that?"

Harry paused for a moment, considering, but in the end he had nothing to lose by telling them, even if Kinsey wanted to make life difficult. "Well, I don't know how thoroughly you've been briefed on my abilities, Mr. President, but they have a tendency to make complex machinery go haywire. Alteran technology, however, doesn't have that problem. It even seems to harness what I'd call magic as it goes about doing things like creating wormholes. And…well." Despite having resolved to tell the two men about his problems, Harry still hesitated for a moment. But then he quashed his worries before they could get the better of him.

"There's also the fact, Mr. President, that I don't actually have full control over the ritual that transports me from reality to reality. The first time I traveled was quite by accident, and even after I figured out how I'd done it, I never have figured out how to get back…home." Even just mentioning his original reality, Harry's voice broke. Memories of his friends, his comrades…no. Now wasn't the time for sorrow. "So…I did the only thing I could. I kept traveling, moving forward, researching the deeper mysteries of magic, trying to find a way to control my travel between dimensions. And then, after hundreds of years of searching…I found a wormhole ring that controls magic in specially-designed circuitry and harnesses the result to catapult matter across an entire galaxy. It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's the closest I've come since…well, ever."

There was a long silence as the men in front of Harry absorbed what he'd just told them. Finally, after several long minutes of contemplation, President Hayes spoke, asking, "You said…you've been searching for several hundred years? If you don't mind my asking, just how old are you?"

Harry smiled. That was an old question, but he always enjoyed answering it. "I haven't kept an incredibly precise count, actually. It's difficult to do so when each new reality measures time slightly differently. But according to Inter, who's kept count as well as any computer, I'm about 500 Earth years old, getting close to 550."

"How…" Kinsey choked out, "how is that even possible?"

Harry smirked. He'd finally managed to break through the man's hostility. "I'd like to keep that to myself, if you don't mind. If it helps, it's not something anyone without magic flowing through their veins could pull off. It also went so disastrously wrong that I'm not entirely certain I could replicate the process."

And just like that, Kinsey was back to his usual self. "You mean to tell me that you discovered a means to live forever and you've never looked further into it? I find that hard to believe."

"Why would I look further into immortality? I'm demonstrably immortal, and I haven't met many witches or wizards who were especially interested in outliving everyone they ever knew and loved." That successfully put a damper on Kinsey's attitude, so Harry decided to press further. "But even discounting that, I would never tell you, Mr. Kinsey. Ignoring the fact that you're technically a representative of a nation I'm amicable with, you're an incredibly unpleasant, manipulative person, and you could very well have doomed the entire planet with your hair-brained scheme to take over the SGC. That is simply not the kind of person I would trust with the secret of immortality."

President Hayes sat up straighter. "I'm sorry, did you say that my Vice President was endangering the entire planet?"

Harry nodded. "In a manner of speaking. The SGC was working on ways to fight the oncoming invasion, and Kinsey was trying to shut them down and discredit their claims that the Earth was in any danger at all. If Doctor Weir wasn't so good at telling lies from truth, he may very well have succeeded." Seeing that President Hayes was getting quite upset, Harry quickly added, "Now, despite having previously accused him of doing so willfully, I rather doubt his actions were anything more than an ignorant power-grab, in hindsight. But still, he showed a remarkable talent for ignoring the evidence and also a rather insatiable greed, now that I know what he was after. So, all things being accounted for, I think I'm justified in not liking him."

President Hayes slowly turned to Kinsey, and Harry thought he saw the latter swallow nervously.

"Bob," the President asked dangerously, "Is this true?"

Harry could see the denial on Kinsey's face, so he decided to interject. "You know, Mr. Kinsey, that President Hayes can easily check with the others involved in the incident. I would consider being honest, and quite possibly begging for mercy. No matter what you think you can accomplish on your own, I think you're going to need the President's goodwill going forward."

This quite clearly gave Kinsey pause. As President Hayes continued to stare him down, the politician was clearly struggling to come up with something to say. Eventually, his shoulders slumped. "It's true." He said simply, but he didn't leave it there. "I wasn't acting alone, though. There are…others." Harry noted the heavy emphasis, and perhaps even fear put into such a simple word. "They…they already won't be happy with me, and I'm afraid the wizard is right. I'm probably going to need all the help I can get to avoid their wrath."

Now that was interesting. "These others…" Harry said, "do you think it's possible they could have been trying to do what I accused you of doing? Stalling Earth's defenses long enough to overcome them?"

"I don't know," Kinsey said, sighing. "I find it hard to believe. They've always professed a strong desire to rid this planet of aliens, or else use said aliens to their advantage. But lately…I just don't know."

After a long moment, President Hayes turned to Harry. "Mr. Potter, you've given me a lot to think about, and a lot to discuss with my Vice President, as well. You can rest assured, I'll do everything in my power to help you get back home, though I hope you'll be around long enough to help us with our own problems. At the moment, however, I would greatly appreciate it if you allowed me to discuss what has been revealed here…privately."

Harry bowed his head in acknowledgement. "Of course, Mr. President. It's been a pleasure meeting with you."

"Likewise, Mr. Potter." The President extended a hand, and Harry shook it. Then Harry left, mind racing. He hadn't really expected the meeting to go that way. It was nice, to be sure, and it seemed like he'd even helped reveal the true nature of Kinsey to President Hayes. But what would it all mean going forward?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

A/N: Special thanks to Chuck from the DPSW Discord server, who helped me plot out the scene with Kinsey and President Hayes. Honestly, that scene just did not want to be written. Now that we're past it, hopefully there won't be any more extended gaps between chapter postings.

Hopefully.

Best of wishes,

feauxen

(and because it's been so long, here's a little teaser)

Next time: Harry and the SGC figure out how, exactly, they're going to get to Atlantis, and what they might do once they've gotten there.