Disclaimer: 'Stargate' and 'Harry Potter' both belong to their respective creators, so I don't own them; I'm just borrowing them for the immediate moment in time and space

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Truth and Revelations

As the sound of the phone ringing reached his ears, Daniel groaned slightly, instinctively reaching out to hit at his alarm clock before he remembered that he'd stopped using it as a wake-up call after the nightmares started. If nothing else, whenever he'd used it he'd always set it to a time when, upon waking up to it, he felt as though he still needed some sleep after the nightmare. Besides, nightmare or now,he often got up in time to get into the SGC anyway; he just had a little less time when he didn't use the alarm.

Rubbing his eyes slightly as he sat up in bed, Daniel reached over to pick up and put his glasses on before he walked over to where the phone was sitting, on a table near the window.

"Yes?" he asked, pushing his glasses slightly upwards as he rubbed his eyes with his fingers. "What is it?"

"Hey, Jackson," the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, Daniel's latest commander in SG-1, said, sounding slightly grimmer than Daniel remembered his new friend being in the past. "Sorry to bother you- I know you'd be coming in soon anyway- but I thought you should know sooner rather than later; our mission's been cancelled."

"What?" Daniel said, his eyes widening slightly as he nearly dropped the telephone in shock. "But-"

"Yeah, I know it's a shock, but trust me; Landry's got a very good reason for it," Mitchell explained, his voice sounding slightly lower, as though he didn't want anyone to overhear him; if he was at SGC, then what he was talking about mustn't have been announced to the entire base just yet. "Last night, someone- a group of someones, based on what we've managed to find out over the last few hours- broke into the SGC and dialled an address on the Stargate; they went through, leaving the 'gate to shut down automatically, and now… well, here we are.."

"What?" Daniel yelled, unable to contain his surprise; he'd never imagined that someone might be capable of doing that. Alien infiltration via the Stargate was one thing, but that someone could break into SGC to use the 'gate for themselves from this side…

"But… but how could they have known about the Stargate?" he asked, hoping that at least his immediate questions could be answered. "And how could anyone even get into the facility in the first place?"

"You've got me there, Jackson," Mitchell replied apologetically, dashing any hopes Daniel might have entertained to a simpler solution. "We've already got a bunch of people- including Sam, of course- running over the people who might have the information and resources to pull this kind of stunt off without someone knowing about it beforehand, and so far the only people we've come up with are out of business, and wouldn't have much reason to go through the 'gate themselves, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do…" Daniel replied, nodding grimly to himself; even after nearly a year, the incident when the Stargate itself had been stolen by the Trust still left him feeling shaken. If Teal'c hadn't shown up when he did, or if the Jaffa had kept his symbiote after that incident where he and Bra'tac had been forced to share one to stay alive…

Daniel shuddered slightly; the thought of Teal'c dying was bad enough, he'd really rather not think about what could have happened if he'd been forced to watch the Trust shoot Sam just before help showed up…

"So, if our original mission's been cancelled, what are we doing instead?" he asked, turning his mind rapidly back to the present; after the dream, he did not want to start thinking about Sam like that all over again. "Something to do with this infiltration of SGC, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah, we've got one of the guys who broke in held in our cells- seems like the guy set the Stargate to shut down after a certain time period and ended up getting caught by the beta shift 'gate monitor before he could go through the 'gate himself- so we've been trying to see if he'll tell us anything about what he and his associates were planning," Mitchell explained. "If that doesn't give us anything useful, SG-1's going to be sent through the 'gate to the address these suckers dialled; last address dialled remains stored in the computer, apparently- you can pull it up again if you take enough time to study the computer's memory hard enough- and Landry figures that we'd be the best bet at getting back alive from wherever it is these cult loonies went to."

Daniel had to agree with that last comment; without meaning to sound arrogant, SG-1 did have a good record of getting back alive from dangerous missions (OK, all four members of the team- six, if you counted Jonas and Jack into the bargain- ended up running into near-death situations at some point or another, often dying literally for a few seconds, but the fact that they were all still here was a pretty good record). He was just about to hang up the phone when a thought occurred to him.

"Wait a minute… did you say that the people who broke in were 'cult loonies'?" he asked, a slight edge of concern in his voice; he'd had enough problems with cults in his life without having any more to deal with. "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, it's just that the guy we've captured looks like he belongs to some kind of strange cult, so it seems a pretty good guess that the people who went through the 'gate before we found him are dressed like that," Mitchell explained, chuckling slightly. "It's a pretty dumb costume, really; a mask that looks like a skull and a long black robe. If you ask me, the man's trying too hard to be intimidating; he actually tripped over the robe while trying to get through the 'gate, and the technician was able to pin him to the ground before he could get up to the 'gate…"

Although Mitchell's story as to how the invader had been caught was indeed rather amusing, Daniel wasn't really paying attention to how they'd managed to take down the man who'd infiltrated the SGC. At the description of the costume the man had been wearing when he'd been caught, the archaeologist's blood had almost instantly run cold, his brain frantically trying to come up with an explanation that didn't suggest the very thing that seemed to have been haunting his nightmares for the last few weeks.

If that man wasn't wearing a Death Eater's outfit, his memory was worse than he'd thought, and, given that he had mastered around twenty different languages by the time he was twenty and still knew them well, including a few that no longer existed, he didn't think that a poor memory was going to be a likely explanation…

But it can't be them! his mind protested. They fell apart after he died; there's no way they'd be able to agree on anything long enough to gather together again! And how could they even know about the Stargate; I haven't even told my old friends what I'm doing now, how could my enemies have found out about it!

"Uh… Jackson?" Mitchell's voice said, breaking through the archaeologist's train of thought. "Is something wrong? You've suddenly gone pretty quiet…"

"Oh… sorry, Mitchell," Daniel replied, trying to keep his mind on-track; if the description of the man's costume was accurate, he and his teammates were likely to have some serious trouble facing them when they want through the Stargate, and he had to remain focused if he was going to get them out of it. "Just… the outfit sounded like something I… well, I knew some people who dressed like that- they were definite 'crackpots', for lack of a better term- when I was younger."

"Really?" Mitchell said, sounding slightly surprised at the news. "What can you tell us about them?"

"Let me get down there and I'll let you know," Daniel said, turning to his wardrobe and opening it, quickly grabbing his traditional SG-1 combat fatigues and tossing them onto his bed. "Make sure that Sam and Teal'c are there as well; I'd appreciate only having to tell them about this once. I don't know that much about these guys- assuming they're even the same people in the first place- but-"

"Trust me; right now, we'd be grateful for anything you've got on these suckers, Jackson," Mitchell said, sounding significantly cheerier than he had been when the conversation started. Evidently, the prospect that they might actually have some information about these guys was something Mitchell had been waiting to hear for a while now. "See you in the main conference room in about an hour, OK?"

Daniel could only nod briefly as he terminated the call and pulled on his clothes. For once in his life, as he shrugged on the jacket, he was grateful for the long sleeves that were the standard issue for this kind of costume. They may be slightly uncomfortable on some of the planets SG-1 visited- actually, most of them, now that he thought about it, they often made him feel uncomfortably warm- but, right now, these sleeves might help him be prepared for what might happen if he was right, without attracting too many questions if he was wrong.

Reaching over to a nearby drawer by his bed, Daniel pulled a small key out of his pocket, put it in the keyhole in the front of the drawer, and opened it. The drawer only contained a few items, none of which seemed like much, but had been locked away and treated with almost reverential care, as though they more valuable than the century-old artefacts Daniel studied on a regular basis. The contents consisted of an old scroll of parchment, a leather-bound photograph album, a tattered Get Well Soon card, and a thin stick made of holly and about eleven inches long, all of these lying on top of a well-folded cloak made of some unidentifiable material that lay at the bottom of the drawer.

Picking up the stick, Daniel stared at it reflectively for a moment, lost in memories, before sliding it into his left sleeve, folding the end of the sleeve inwards to give the stick some 'support' while he was walking. So long as he was careful, it shouldn't fall out of his sleeve or be too noticeable to anyone watching him, especially if he took care to keep his hand in his pocket and avoiding bending the arm much…

Staring at the drawer's contents, Daniel briefly ran his hand over the card, a small, sad smile flashing across his face as he remembered the innocent girl who had given him the card after a near-fatal accident when he was thirteen, before he shut and locked the drawer once more.

He could remember his lost love later; right now, he had work to do.

And he could only hope that his theory would turn out to be wrong and he wasn't dealing with the one remaining reminder of his past that he didn't want to see again…

Fifty minutes later, Daniel was walking into the main SGC conference room, hardly surprised to find Mitchell, Sam, Teal'c and General Landry already all sitting in their chairs and looking expectantly at the door.

"You're late, Jackson," Mitchell said teasingly.

"I said I'd be here in one hour, Mitchell; I still have ten minutes before I could be called 'late'," Daniel retorted, smiling slightly at his commander as he indicated his watch before moving to the top of the table. "Before I tell you all anything about this group, I want to make it clear that my information on this group is limited, and it's been a while since I heard anything about them; to be honest, I thought they'd shut down over two decades ago."

"Whatever you can give us is fine, Doctor Jackson," Landry replied, nodding reassuringly at the archaeologist. "Although I'd be curious to know how you know about them."

"I had a few close encounters with them when I was about seventeen; the son of one of the members of this group went to my school, and he tried to get me involved in the cult," Daniel explained, crossing his fingers slightly in his pocket. Strictly speaking, his story was true; the son of one of the group had been at his school, it was just that he, personally, had never tried to recruit Daniel. He hated having to lie to his friends about this, but he'd rather not give away something about his past that he'd tried so hard to put behind him unless he knew there wasn't another option but to tell them. "They were never an especially high-profile group, really- I don't think the normal investigation groups even knew they existed at the time- but they were pretty ruthless when they wanted to be."

"What can you tell us about the motivations this group possesses for their actions?" Teal'c asked, raising a curious eyebrow.

"Essentially, they called themselves 'Death Eaters'," Daniel explained, making sure to maintain a fairly fixed position at the top of the table; he didn't want to get too close and have anyone notice how tense this discussion was making him. "Their leader was essentially a racist, but the reasoning under which he chose who wasn't 'pure', and thus should be killed, was rather complicated- I'm not even sure how he selected his targets myself," he explained, as he looked around at his friends, hoping they didn't notice how he'd tensed up slightly while talking. Sam was looking at him with a slightly quizzical expression on her face, but otherwise nobody seemed to notice anything odd about his behaviour. "His followers were a bunch of like-minded people, commonly mounting brief, surgical attacks on anyone who didn't fit in with their views of the world; they found a house they wanted to eliminate, went in there, killed everyone, and walked out again. Their leader was pretty terrifying to those who knew about him, but he was also pretty much the only reason any of his followers stayed in the group; he died about twenty years ago, and those of the group who were still alive either went to jail or ran away."

"And you think we're dealing with the leftovers of this group here?" Mitchell asked, looking curiously at Daniel.

"Essentially, yes; their outfits were pretty distinctive," Daniel replied, nodding in the affirmative. "If it's not them, I'd be very surprised."

"So… any ideas what they'd want with the Stargate?" Sam asked, looking directly at Daniel. As always, Daniel felt the now-familiar pang in his heart as she looked at him, once again struck by how beautiful she was, and how much he just wanted to take her in his arms and kiss here, even as he knew that she could never look at him the same way he looked at her…

"No," he replied, forcing his mind back on-target; he could fantasise in his free time, not when preparing for a mission. "I don't even know how they'd manage to work together long enough to plan and mount this kind of thing anyway. As I said, their leader died several years ago, and I doubt that any of the others could have the necessary… presence… to bring them back together; convincing them to do something like this couldn't have been easy."

He sighed slightly as he looked apologetically at Mitchell and Landry. "Sorry I can't give you anything else."

"Hey, no swear; right now, anything's good news as far as I'm concerned," Mitchell replied, smiling reassuringly at Daniel before glancing back at General Landry. "Anyway, we any further in getting the address these guys dialled?"

Landry nodded. "I just got off the phone with the Gate Control Room; they're only a chevron away from working out which address was dialled," he explained, as he looked around at the SG-1 members. "I should make it clear that what we've got of the address makes it clear that this isn't somewhere you've visited before; we've got no idea what could be on the other side of it, and I'm certainly not sending you through before we know for sure that there's a DHD. I know these people already went through it, but we have no way of knowing if they were ever intending to come back or simply wanted to start over somewhere else."

Daniel could only nod slightly at that statement. He knew that the Death Eaters wouldn't go to all this effort just to get a new start- they'd all gone to a great deal of effort to escape the Ministry here on Earth, and anyone who'd succeeded so far wasn't likely to be afraid of failure- but, with a lack of ideas to what they'd want with a Stargate, he'd just have to stay quiet and hope they could find out what was going on before the situation got much worse.

A few minutes later, the SG-1 team were standing in front of the Stargate, all of them as ready for a potential combat situation as they could be. Mitchell was holding his now-typical carbine Heckler & Goch G36 , Sam and Teal'c were carrying their FN P90s, and Daniel's hand was hovering over his Beretta pistol, which was in its holster on his belt; as always, the archaeologist wasn't entirely sure about going into a Stargate with a gun in his hand when he wasn't entirely sure what might be on the other side.

"So, what did the MALP have to show us?" Mitchell asked, glancing over at Sam as the four of them prepared to enter the Stargate, the 'gate already revolving as the Dialling Room encoded the necessary chevrons.

"Not much, unfortunately," Sam replied, glancing over at her new commander. "Daniel thinks he saw some hieroglyphs that referred to 'fire' a great deal, but we don't have any idea what they have to do with why this particular address was dialled."

"Well, actually, they weren't hieroglyphs; that's a strictly Egyptian term," Daniel put in, looking over at Sam and Mitchell as he spoke. "They were written in the Greek alphabet, or at least some variation of it; I think I noticed some reference to Hestia as well."

"Hestia?" Mitchell asked, as the seventh chevron finally engaged, the unstable vortex energy being expelled before them as he turned to look at Daniel. "Wasn't she one of the ones that was eaten by Chronos?"

"Yes, she was the first-born of the Greek Gods," Daniel replied, nodding briefly at Mitchell as the Stargate stabilised. "However, paradoxically she was also the youngest, as she was the last one to be expelled from Chronos when Zeus forced his father to expel his devoured siblings. She gave up her position among the Twelve Olympians to Demeter to allow her to focus on tending the sacred fire of Mount Olypmus, and is generally known as the Goddess of the hearth in mythology."

"Ah," Mitchell said, nodding in understanding as he turned to look at the active 'gate before him. "So… what do you think we've got on the other side?"

"Who knows?" Daniel shrugged, wishing he had more to offer. "I can't begin to guess what the Death Eaters would want with a world like that one. If it was more advanced than Earth, I could probably understand why they went there, but it looks like it hasn't advanced much beyond maybe a Middle-Age level of society at best."

"In that case, we should endeavour to defeat this cult as soon as possible," Teal'c put in, looking over at Mitchell critically. "If they are as dangerous as Daniel Jackson says they are, it seems almost certain that they will not treat the local population well; we should move as quickly as possible before they have a chance to do anything serious."

"Agreed," Mitchell said, as he looked around at the rest of the SG-1 team once more before walking up to the Stargate, vanishing through the event horizon, followed closely by the other three…

And, light-years away, at the other end of the wormhole, inside a largemarble templewhere two elaborate thrones dominated the surroundings, a man in a long dark robe with pale hands and face, sitting in the less elaborate throne, looked up slightly, as though sensing something that he hadn't been aware of before.

On the throne next to him- a throne that, if possible, was even more elaborately-designed than his own- a tall, elegant woman with long red hair and an impressive… figure, for lack of a better term… looked curiously at the man.

"What?" she asked, in the same deep, metallic tone with a hint of duality that the man beside her had spoken in when he had entered the SGC facility. "Is something wrong?"

"Far from it, my good Hestia," the man replied, looking over at the woman with a small grin visible on his face. "It would appear that an old… friend… of mine has decided to come to our planet…"