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

"'Harry Potter'?" Mitchell said, leaning forward in his chair to stare at Daniel- whatever his name might have been, it was Daniel for the moment- with a sceptical expression. "No offence, but that sounds a bit… a bit…"

"Stupid? Odd?" Daniel replied, chuckling slightly. "Yeah, I know it's a bit strange in its way, but there are worse names in the wizarding world- I mean, Draco Malfoy just sounds completely ridiculous…"

For a brief moment, Daniel wanted to just forget his current problems and chuckle slightly, but shook his head and forced himself to focus on what he had to tell his friends; poking fun at his old school nemesis, while entertaining, would have to wait.

"Anyway, what you need to understand most about what I'm about to tell you is that, like any group of people, there are evil witches and wizards as well as good ones," he explained, as he looked around the room, still waiting for someone to question him. Landry, he noted, was looking increasingly sceptical, but so far he was remaining silent, prepared to let Daniel speak before voicing his doubts, and Sam at least seemed willing to accept his explanation, although Teal'c and Mitchell still seemed slightly sceptical. "About… sixty years ago, I think it was- I never felt that inclined to look for more specific information about him- one particular wizard, born and raised in Britain, went as bad as you could get. His real name was Tom Marvolo Riddle, but he insisted upon being known as 'Lord Voldemort'- an anagram of his real name- for no apparent reason other than that he thought it sounded good."

Mitchell looked up sharply at that.

"What; you mean like the Goa'uld we encountered back there?" he said, staring in confusion at Daniel. "But why would he call himself-"

Daniel raised one hand in a halting gesture.

"Let me finish," he said, looking in a focused manner at Mitchell, who just nodded in a slightly sheepish manner. "I'll explain that- or try to, at least- in its own time."

Noting the focused expression on Daniel's face, Mitchell simply nodded and allowed the archaeologist to continue speaking.

"I presume I would be correct in saying that this 'Voldemort'- even if he is not the person we encountered on our mission- was not a very pleasant individual to know if you were not on his side?" Teal'c asked, raising an inquiring eyebrow as he looked at Daniel.

"No, he wasn't," Daniel replied, shaking his head. "He was what wizard society calls a 'half-blood' himself- that means that his mother was a witch but his father was just an ordinary human- but he went around acting as though both of his parents had possessed magical abilities, and proclaiming to anyone who'd listen to him that any wizard who wasn't a 'pure-blood' wasn't fit to live. With that attitude behind him, he began to gather a group of people together who shared his so-called 'vision' of a 'pure world', and began a campaign of terror against everyone else on the planet, although he concentrated his efforts on Britain; I think he didn't really want to leave home."

"A 'pure world' in his opinion being…?" Sam asked, looking inquiringly at Daniel. She already had an idea, of course, but she'd prefer to hear it confirmed by her friend, even if she was a bit annoyed at him at the moment…

"A world with no non-magical people in it, along with a world that didn't have any wizards who were either born into muggle- that's what wizards call people without any magic- families or had at least one non-magical parent," Daniel explained. Noticing Sam's confusion, he felt the need to elaborate. "Magic isn't a purely genetic thing, from what I learnt during my time at school. Somehow, it can crop up seemingly at random in families that haven't shown so much as the slightest trace of magic for generations."

He smiled slightly, as though at a fond memory, but as a brief expression of melancholy crossed his face, Daniel shook his head slightly and began to talk again, his expression serious once more. "Anyway, Voldemort and his followers- the Death Eaters, naturally; that's where they come into this story- launched a campaign of terror on the wizard and muggle world alike, committing numerous murders, often just of innocent people who happened not to measure up to Voldemort's standards of perfection. A resistance force was organised against them by Albus Dumbledore, widely regarded as the greatest wizard of the modern age, known as the 'Order of the Phoenix', but even they couldn't stop Voldemort…"

He paused for a moment, briefly feeling a slight catch in his throat as he finally reached the part of this story that directly affected him, but he still continued regardless.

"Until, one night, around thirty-eight years ago, a woman made a prophecy, revealing the birth of the only person in the world capable of defeating Voldemort, and giving the Order a new hope for victory against Voldemort's forces," he said.

"Wait; a prophecy?" Sam said, leaning forward to stare critically at Daniel. "Are you telling me that… magic… can allow people to predict the future?"

"Only a few witches and wizards can do it, and I don't think they can actually control what they're looking at," Daniel replied, briefly looking directly at Sam before he continued to address the entire table. "Anyway, according to the prophecy, in the last days of July of that year, a boy with the power to 'vanquish the Dark Lord' would be born to parents who had defeated a plan of Voldemort's on three different occasions, and would be marked by Voldemort himself as an equal…"

For a brief moment, as he recalled how those simple words had ended up practically condemning him to a destiny he'd never wanted before he'd even been born, a part of Daniel didn't want to continue talking…

But he had to.

He'd kept too much from his friends for too long; now, more than ever before, they had to know…

"And then, towards the end of July, Harry James Potter was born to Lily Evans and James Potter, a muggle-born witch and a pureblood wizard, members of the Order of the Phoenix who had been responsible for three of Voldemort's most pivotal defeats," he said.

Sam looked up sharply at that, confusion evident on her face.

"James and Lily Potter?" she asked, looking at Daniel in confusion. "But… if they're your parents, where do the Jacksons…"

"I'll explain that when the time comes, Sam; I promise," Daniel said, looking reassuringly at her before he continued to talk. "Anyway, Voldemort became aware of the prophecy, and so my parents went into hiding, using a complex spell to conceal the secret of their true location with an old friend of my father's from school, but he betrayed their location to Voldemort. He arrived in their house on Halloween when I was just a year old, and…"

He swallowed slightly as he stopped talking for a moment, reaching over to clasp a nearby chair as though to give him strength, and then he continued to talk. "He killed my father, and then killed my mother when she wouldn't step aside and let him kill me."

For a moment, Daniel was silent, head bowed as his shoulders shook slightly, and, for a moment, Sam was tempted to just reach over and place a reassuring hand on his shoulder…

But, at the same time, a part of her was, much as she was ashamed to admit it, actually glad to see Daniel crying. She'd known him for nearly a decade now, and he'd never mentioned so much as a thing about any of this, when she'd felt comfortable with telling him about her past whenever the occasion arose…

If she'd had a little more time to react, Sam might have tried to comfort Daniel- or Harry; she'd have to ask him if he wanted them to start calling him something else later- but he looked up and started talking once again, a faint redness around his eyes the only hint at how deeply what he was saying affected him.

"Nobody's ever been totally certain as to how it happened," he continued, his voice sounding slightly hoarse as though he were about cry once more, "but, somehow, after my mother's… well, her sacrifice… it granted me some kind of protection… and Voldemort's attempt to curse me backfired, leaving him as a practically nonexistent spirit, while I was left with only a scar on my forehead that looked like a bolt of lightning- the 'mark' that showed me as Voldemort's equal that the prophecy mentioned."

"A scar?" Mitchell said, his eyes automatically flicking to Daniel's forehead, as though looking for something that he might have missed earlier. Of course, there wasn't anything there- Daniel's forehead was as smooth and unmarked as it had been for the last six years since he got his shorter haircut- but a part of Harry couldn't help but sigh slightly as this echo back to his past.

"I had plastic surgery to get rid of the scar a few years ago, when I'd finally earned the money to afford the operation; it was too distinctive for my liking, really," Daniel explained, answering Mitchell's unanswered query. "Before I managed to get the money together for the operation, I relied on basic make-up and my long hair to keep it concealed; that's why I stopped wearing my hair like that," he added, off Sam's curious expression, before he continued to talk.

"Anyway, after my parents' deaths, I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle- Petunia and Vernon Dursley, and their ridiculously spoilt son Dudley- for about ten years- my mother's sacrifice granted me some kind of 'blood protection' so long as I stayed with a relative of hers- until I received a letter on my eleventh birthday inviting me to attend Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Sam's jaw nearly dropped in surprise at that,

A school for wizards? If she'd ever really thought about magic, she'd assumed that the people who used it were just instinctively gifted with knowledge of what spells and incantations did what.

An entire school for them… the fact that something like that could be kept secret from the world was incredible…

Shaking her head, she noticed Daniel smile slightly as he continued to speak; evidently, he had fond memories of the school in question.

"It was like a dream come true for me, really," he said, one corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile as he continued to speak. "True, everyone kept on gawking at my forehead when all I wanted to do was be a normal student- it's hard to get away from the fact that you defeated a powerful Dark Lord before you could even speak coherently- but I had fun. For the first time in my life, I even had friends; my aunt and uncle had never really cared about me, regarding me as a freak just because I could do magic, and my cousin tormented anyone who looked like they might show me some common courtesy."

"Wait a minute," Sam said, raising her hand to interrupt Daniel as she stared at him incredulously. "You mean… your own relatives hated you just because you could do magic?"

Daniel shrugged. "Personally, I think my aunt was just jealous that my mum could do all this stuff and she couldn't, so, in her mind, she tried to deal with it by making magic something to be hated," he said, his voice in a neutral tone; he'd had twenty years to get over his upbringing, he could handle having to talk about it once more. "Anyway, as I was saying, I had two specific friends while I was at Hogwarts; Ron Weasley, one of the seven Weasley children- the Weasley family commonly had several children despite being fairly poor- and Hermione Granger, a muggle-born witch with an unbelievable talent for magic.

"Unfortunately, our school years were invariably eventful ones, and it wasn't just because some of the teachers made things difficult- the Potions teacher in particular, Severus Snape, had a grudge against my father for the way they'd hated each other when they were at school, and seemed to assume that I went around with a head the size of the Stargate when actually I was perfectly content to just be a normal student."

As Daniel paused for a moment, Sam's eyes widened slightly in surprise as she noticed the expression on Daniel's face as he spoke about the teacher in question; specifically, cold hatred.

What could this 'Snape' have done to Daniel- or Harry, as he was known then- that would make Daniel hate himlike that…?

"Anyway," Daniel said, as he continued to speak, "as I said, my school years featured several events taking place that normally wouldn't have occurred in even a magical school. In my first year, the spirit- or whatever you want to call it; he claimed later to have been less than a ghost at this point- of Voldemort possessed one of the teachers to try and gain access to the Philosopher's Stone, an artefact that would allow him access to the Elixir of Life, which would make him immortal and give him a new body. Ron and Hermione helped me get past the traps protecting the stone, but it came down to just Voldemort and I. My mother's protection somehow caused the body Voldemort was using to be… well, burnt to cinders, really… and the Stone was destroyed.

"Second year, a diary containing a fragment of Voldemort's soul- a version of himself when he was sixteen, to be precise- was slipped to Ron's sister, Ginny Weasley…"

For a moment, Daniel paused, once again leaning on a nearby chair as he lowered his head, but, as soon as Sam began to move her arm towards him, he looked up once more and continued to speak. "The diary essentially possessed her, using her body to access a secret chamber that had been hidden in Hogwarts years ago, and contained a basilisk- a massive serpent that could literally kill you just by looking at you. Fortunately, anyone it attacked was only petrified- they only saw its reflection or saw it through something, and never looked directly into its eyes- and Hermione eventually worked out what was going on, helped by the fact that I could speak Parseltongue."

"You could speak what?" Landry asked, looking in confusion at Daniel.

"Snake-language, basically," Daniel said, before chuckling slightly.

"What's the joke?" Mitchell asked, looking curiously at Daniel.

"Just thinking that, in the old days, we'd probably have heard some comment from Jack about how you guys already knew that, and I'd have retorted by saying that I'm talking about actual snakes in this case…" Daniel said, by way of explanation.

"Oh… yeah," Sam said, smiling slightly at the thought of their old commander. It was true enough; Jack O'Neill probably would have made some comment like that…

Then she fully processed what Daniel had said.

"You can talk to snakes?" she said, staring incredulously at her friend.

Daniel sighed. "Yeah, I know; it's something that apparently got accidentally transferred into me when Voldemort tried to kill me," he explained. "His mother came from a family where that trait had been prominent for generations, and somehow, when the curse that was meant to kill me… failed… it forged a certain 'link' between us; the scar hurt when he was close by or feeling particularly malicious, we occasionally had visions of what the other one was seeing, that sort of thing."

Shaking his head, he continued his story. "Anyway, Hermione was petrified before she could reveal what she'd discovered, but Ron and I found a couple of clues she'd left to help us along, and managed to destroy the diary before it could drain Ginny's energy to fuel itself; the basilisk was also killed, but I had a bit of help there from a phoenix."

"A phoenix?" Teal'c said, looking inquiringly at Daniel.

"A mythological bird; when it reaches the end of its life, it bursts into flames and is reborn from the ashes, capable of carrying heavy loads and travelling from place to place in a blaze of fire," Daniel explained, smiling once again. "Actually, the phoenix in question donated the core of my wand; an interesting coincidence, I've always felt."

"Wand?" Mitchell said, looking at Daniel with ever-increasing surprise, although this was accompanied by an eager smile. "You have a wand?"

Smiling, Daniel reached into his left sleeve, pulled out the wand once more- he'd put it away again as he was dialling the DHD- and passed it over to Mitchell, a small smile on his face.

"Made of holly and with a phoenix feather at its core- the core kind of acts as a 'power source', if you want to think of it in technological terms," Daniel explained as Mitchell studied the wand in his hand, a small smile on his face. "Each wand is unique to its user, and can only be used effectively by the wizard who owns it. May I?" he added, holding out a hand to Mitchell, who simply passed him back the wand; Daniel had noticed the increasingly sceptical expression on Landry's face, and wanted to try something to prove that he wasn't crazy.

"Sam, could you pick up that file over there, please?" he asked, indicating a file off to one side. "I just want to show you guys an example of what I can do."

"OK…" Sam said, a slightly sceptical tone in her voice as she reached back to pick up the folder in question. Turning back to the table, she held the folder out in front of her, and looked back at Daniel. "Is this OK?"

"Perfect," Daniel smiled, as he raised the wand. "Expelliarmus!"

As he spoke, a jet of red light burst from the wand, struck the file in Sam's hand, and sent it flying into the air, where Daniel neatly snatched it out of the air.

"The Disarming Spell," he explained, as he noticed Mitchell's incredulous expression. "A useful bit of magic in a combat situation, really; your opponent loses his weapon while you're free to continue fighting."

Slipping the wand back down his sleeve, he continued to tell his story. "Anyway, third year was fairly quiet; I confronted the guy who betrayed my parents- a wizard called Peter Pettigrew- but he managed to get away before any officials could put him back in prison. In fourth year, I was forced to participate in a tournament against two other magical schools- and attend a ball even though I was really uncomfortable with dancing- but, at the end, it turned out to be a trap set by Voldemort and Pettigrew so that he could acquire a sample of my blood and use it in a ritual that would give him a new body."

"Was it successful?" Teal'c asked, looking at Daniel quizzically.

"Yeah, it was," Daniel said, nodding slightly. For a moment, Sam saw an expression of pure hatred cross Daniel's face, the kind of anger that she'd never seen him display even when he had been face-to-face with some of the worst the Goa'uld had to offer, but then it vanished and he continued to tell his story. "He stayed quiet for a year or so afterwards- he didn't want to let anyone know he was back, and the wizard rulers were perfectly happy to feign ignorance as they were totally unprepared to cope with a second war against Voldemort- but his return was eventually publicly exposed when he tried to acquire the copy of the prophecy about the two of us that was made all those years ago- he hadn't heard the whole of it, and wanted to see if there was something else about the content that he should be aware of."

Something about Daniel's body language suggested to Sam that there was more to that story than he was telling them, but, since he seemed to be giving them everything they needed to know, she decided not to push the issue; if there was something he seemed to have omitted, he probably had a good reason for it.

"The year after that," Daniel continued, "as Voldemort began his familiar murder sprees against anyone who opposed him, Ginny and I began dating, and I learned more about how Voldemort had managed to survive being hit by his own curse all those years ago; he'd made six horcruxes."

"Six what?" Mitchell asked, looking in confusion at Daniel.

"Essentially," Daniel explained, "a horcrux is an ancient dark magical artefact- widely believed to be the darkest magical object known to exist- that allows the user to live practically forever, but at the cost of fracturing their very soul into pieces. As I understand it, killing people causes damage to the soul on some level, so the maker of the horcrux uses a spell to take advantage of that damage and place a piece of his soul somewhere else-"

"And the result is he's unkillable because, even if you kill his body, these… horcrux thingies… are still hanging around, acting as a kind of anchor for whatever's left in his body?" Mitchell asked, waving his hand in an uncertain manner.

"Exactly," Daniel said, nodding at Mitchell. "As it turned out, the diary that had controlled Ginny in my second year was one of them, and another had been destroyed over the summer, but that still left four horcruxes unaccounted for; seven was regarded as the most powerful magical number, but the seventh fragment of Voldemort's soul remained in his body, and was the last piece that would need to be destroyed.

"With this in mind, Ron, Hermione and I set out to find and destroy the remaining horcruxes. I tried to break up with Ginny for her own safety- I was worried that if Voldemort knew how I felt about her, he might try and kill her to get back at me- but she convinced me that she was in danger anyway simply because she was a pure-blood who saw muggle-borns as equals, and we got back together. I even started spending some more time with the eldest Weasley brother- Bill Weasley, who worked as a curse breaker for the wizard bank in Egypt- and he started my interest in Egyptian history and cultures. It was also at around this point that I began to learn I had a certain natural talent for languages, as I learnt a few of them to help in the search for the horcruxes; my personal theory about that is that, since my brain was already capable of understanding snakes as though they were speaking English, it wasn't that much of a stretch for my brain to learn other human languages, and I'd soon picked up about ten more in between searching for the remaining horcruxes."

"Did you find the horcruxes of which you speak?" Teal'c asked.

Daniel sighed deeply as he thought back to those dark days, when he could never be sure where his next meal was coming from or whether he'd be able to get a decent night's sleep without somebody charging in to kill him…

"Eventually, but it wasn't without some losses; Ron was killed during a Death Eater ambush after we located a horcrux in the muggle orphanage where Voldemort grew up, and Hermione was forced to go into St Mungo's- a magical hospital- after an attempt to destroy Voldemort's snake, Nagini- the last horcrux- nearly resulted in her being fatally poisoned," Daniel explained, pulling out a chair and collapsing into it as he recalled the events of those last few days. "Damnit…" he muttered under his breath, apparently descending into a familiar pattern of blaming himself for something he couldn't have controlled, "if I'd just been a bit faster, I might have been able to save him…"

Sam was about to reach out and try to comfort him, but Daniel stood up before she could make a move.

"Anyway," he said, as he looked around at his friends, grateful to see that they were still listening intently to his story, "it was while Ginny and I were sitting by Hermione's bed that we were visited by Pettigrew himself…"