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

Feedback: I'd like it, believe me

AN: This is set around a day or two after the last chapter, following Ferguson's death and the Jaffa vote for democracy; a couple of those issues might be tackled, but I had a few ideas for personal development for the characters that I felt needed exploring

AN 2: Slight incorporation of a few post-DH events here, but it's nothing major; a few details about the structure of the Ministry of Magic, maybe some points about the family lives of some of the other characters, things like that

AN 3: A wand-related idea that Sam comes up with here was inspired by the Batman/Harry crossover "Sufficiently Advanced Technology", but I'm putting my own interpretation on things

Truth and Revelations

As he sat silently behind his desk in his office, staring at the screen before him without actually processing what was happening on it- he knew that he had to write up some reports on recent events but it was hard to really bring yourself to focus when you had so much else going through your mind-, Daniel almost couldn't believe how rapidly things were progressing.

It had barely been a fortnight since Voldemort's resurrection- well, since he'd become aware of Voldemort's resurrection, anyway; he freely acknowledged that all available evidence made it clear that Voldemort had been alive and re-assembling his forces for almost a decade without anyone knowing before he'd come to the SGC-, and already he felt like he was back at Hogwarts, running around trying to piece together the information that he'd found into some kind of remotely organised shape that would allow him to figure out what his old enemy was actually up to...

It was a bit easier to do that now than it had been back then, of course- for one thing, nobody was trying to conceal information from him because he was 'too young'; anything he didn't know about Voldemort's plans yet was only a mystery because nobody else knew it either-, but that still left him with all kinds of other issues to figure out, including the obvious issue of whether he should see about bringing any more of his old friends in to help. Arthur and Molly Weasley might be too old now to make any kind of positive contribution to the current crisis (Although he was already contemplating the possibility of paying them a visit later on once this situation was over)- to say nothing of Mad-Eye Moody, even assuming he'd survived this long; he'd lost track of the old Auror during the last days of the war and there'd been no reference to him in the news that he'd received since-, but there were a few former members of the Order of the Phoenix such as Kingsley Shacklebolt who might be able to help out (He obviously wasn't going to bring Mundungus Fletcher in, of course; putting aside the fact that the man had raided Sirius's house and sold off his possessions practically the day after he'd died, the last thing he wanted was Fletcher getting access to the Stargate and risk him becoming the wizarding male equivalent of Vala Mal Doran), and that was without considering the old members of 'Dumbledore's Army' who might be interested...

In the end, though, the issue of the recruitment of additional personal was something that Hermione would be better at than him given her superior knowledge of the status of his old allies in the Order of the Phoenix; it was one of the reasons she'd gone back to Britain for a few days. She'd left Kinglsey Shacklebolt in charge of the Ministry in her absence- the former Auror had been elected to the position after the war but had stood aside and allowed Hermione to stand for the position in his last election, a year or so before Daniel's Ascension; according to the Daily Prophets he'd received at the time Shacklebolt had stated that he preferred field work and wanted to get in a few more active years before his retirement, and felt that the more youthful Hermione would make a good candidate to continue the reforms he'd begun-, trusting the older man to keep things running smoothly without too many people learning about her absence, but there were still a few issues that would require her personal attention and signature that Kingsley couldn't handle himself.

Indeed, the only real problem for Hermione had been how to get her back to the Ministry in the first place. Since the wards around the Ministry detected Apparation even if they didn't block it directly- the possibility of an emergency visit was something that nobody could overlook-, it had been decided that a link had to be established from the SGC to the British floo network, reasoning that people kept less of an eye on the floo system on the grounds that all entrances were carefully monitored and in full view at all times, allowing Hermione to easily travel to the fireplace in her office where only Shacklebolt would be aware of her presence.

Thanks to a couple of charms from Lupin and Hermione, accompanied by some quick maintenance work from Sergeant Siler, a makeshift 'fireplace' had soon been established in an unused room on Level Seventeen, linked to one of the air vents to provide a connection to the main system. Lupin and Hermione had contributed a few charms to prevent the smoke from the fire from drifting into any of the other rooms in the base, and from there it had been relatively simple to establish the SGC's link to the traditional Floo network (Hermione had simply told Daniel that they knew people in the Floo Network Authority who wouldn't ask too many questions and left it at that).

Hermione's current absence aside, however, things seemed to be going well with his old wizarding allies' integration into daily operations at the SGC. Fred and George had settled down to read over a few mission reports of some of the SGC's more interesting past missions- Daniel had a feeling that they'd particularly enjoy the superficial aspects of the mission to Argos, while the information about the final fates of Abydos and the Tollan should reinforce the scale of what their current enemies were capable of-, Lupin and Tonks were getting the 'guided tour' of some of the alien technology salvaged over the years from Mitchell, and the last he'd heard Hagrid and Teal'c had agreed to have a few sparring sessions

"Daniel?" a voice said from his door.

Glancing up, Daniel smiled slightly at the sight of Sam standing there, a couple of mugs of coffee in her hands.

"Thought you could use something to keep you up," she said, indicating the cups by way of explanation. "It's been a... difficult... couple of weeks; even if we can't stop you coming into work, you need more than adrenaline to keep you going."

"Yeah... good point," Daniel said, briefly glancing at his clock as he took the cup and noting with some surprise that he'd been going over the reports for at least three hours since he came in that morning; he'd been more focused than he'd thought. "Any word from Hermione yet?"

"Nothing yet, but Siler said he's keeping an eye on the... fireplace... in case anything comes up," Sam replied her expression clearly reflecting her slight scepticism at her last statement.

"Still having trouble with it all, huh?" Daniel said, standing up from behind the desk and walking around to stand beside Sam, smiling slightly at her.

"Well... a bit, anyway," Sam admitted with an apologetic shrug. "I mean, I believe in it, don't get me wrong, but after we've spent so long being able to prove that most of the 'magic' of the Goa'uld had a fundamentally scientific explanation behind it, the idea of an entire magical world, with genuine magic, operating on Earth without us knowing it..."

"If it's any consolation, I don't think it ever gets any easier," Daniel said, smiling over at Sam with a brief nod. "I spent seven years in the wizarding world between eleven and seventeen, and they still managed to come up with new ways to surprise me right up to the end."

He shook his head slightly wistfully at the thought. "I mean, it wasn't always good surprises, of course, but they were always interesting; the chance to see a few dragons might have been terrifying under the circumstances, but-"

"Hold on; dragons?" Sam repeated, looking incredulously at Harry. "Actual dragons?"

"Oh yeah; Hagrid actually tried to raise one during my first year, but he had to give it away when it got too big to stay safely in his hut," Daniel said, smiling wistfully at the memory; the whole mess with Norbert might have been an unwanted inconvenience at the time, but looking back on those events without the panic of the time he had to admit that the dragon had actually been kind of cute...

"Talking of which, how's Hagrid doing?" he asked, looking curiously at Sam. "I heard something about him being given a few pointers on hand-to-hand combat from Teal'c..."

"Yeah, I just passed them by in one of the training room," Sam said, smiling slightly at the memory of the confrontation. "It's actually the most even fight I think I've ever seen Teal'c have since he joined us, really; Hagrid doesn't really have the hand-to-hand skills to beat him, but his sheer size definitely helps..."

"It's the obvious disadvantage of him being half-giant, really," Daniel said, shrugging wistfully at the memory. "Even without the fact that he's mostly immune to various forms of fighting magic because of his giant blood, he's so big that most things aren't that much of a danger to him; he tried to raise a giant spider- it was approximately the size of a small dog when he was at school and it was at least as big as his hut when I was at Hogwarts- back when he was about thirteen despite the fact that it could be dangerous, and then there was Fluffy..."

"'Fluffy'?" Sam asked uncertainly.

"His three-headed dog," Daniel replied, smiling slightly at Sam's stunned expression. "Yeah, I couldn't believe what he called it either, but that's Hagrid for you; he doesn't always recognise just how dangerous something can be."

"Uh..." Sam said after a brief, contemplative pause, clearly debating the merits of the question she was about to ask before her curiosity won over, "on the topic of Hagrid... what you said about him being part giant... I just wondered how that..."

"I don't know how his parents managed to have any kind of relationship," Daniel replied, knowing what Sam was going to ask; it was the same thought that had crossed his mind more than once whenever Hagrid's mother came up in a conversation, but he'd never felt that the time to ask it was right, even without Hagrid's own discomfort about his parentage. "I know that his mother left him and his father when he was about three, and his father died in his second year of Hogwarts, but that's about it; it never exactly seemed like something you could comfortably bring up in conversation. The closest I ever got to learning more about his family was when we met his brother-"

"His brother?" Sam interjected.

"Well, his half-brother, anyway; his mother had a son with another giant shortly after she left his father," Daniel clarified, smiling briefly at the memory of Grawp attacking Umbridge and the centaurs that had been about to kill him and Hermione before he continued his story. "Anyway, all Hagrid told us about her then was that she'd died a while after she gave birth to Grawp- that was his brother's name-, but he didn't regard it as much of a loss as she wasn't that good as a mother; she abandoned both him and Grawp because they were fairly small by giant standards. He was so private about his half-giant status that we only heard about it by accident in fourth year, and even then it took us practically breaking his door down to convince him that we didn't care about it."

"Oh," Sam said, the two simply sitting in silent contemplation for a moment before she looked back at Daniel. "He... he means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

Despite the length of time that had passed since those days when Hagrid had meant so much to him, Daniel smiled.

"Yeah... he does," he said, a wistful tone in his voice at the memories of the old days back at school. "I mean, I had other friends at Hogwarts, of course, but Hagrid was the first person I ever met who actually really cared about me; when I was at school before my cousin bullied anyone who even looked like they were trying to talk to me. He was the one who first actually told me about what had happened to my parents... he took me to buy my first school supplies... he even brought me Hedwig..."

"Your owl?" Sam asked, remembering the white bird that she'd seen in Hermione's office.

"Yeah..." Daniel replied, smiling at the memory. "She was one memento I'd wished that I could take with me, but it would have been too difficult explaining to anyone I met how I ended up with an owl for a pet; Hedwig's not exactly normal, after all."

"True," Sam said, smiling briefly at him before she looked more curiously at him. "Talking of normal, I was wondering... could I... well, you showed me your wand earlier, but-"

With a quick flick of his wrist, Daniel's wand fell from his sleeve and was instantly clasped in his hand, passing it to Sam with a slight smile.

"Just be careful with it," he said as Sam took the offered wand from him, holding it close to her face with a slightly incredulous smile. "I don't think it'll do anything it shouldn't if I give it to you, but I've never been clear on how wands respond to muggles..."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sam said, holding the wand in one hand and waving it slightly with a slightly amused smile on her face at the feel of it- Daniel noting with relief that it didn't even let off sparks or anything like that like the other wands he'd 'practised' with had done when he was trying to find his wand in Ollivander's originally- before she passed it back to Daniel. "And you really cast... spells with that?"

"Yeah, and it's... well, it's 'unique' to me as well, actually," Daniel continued, a wistful smile on his face as he looked at his wand. "Each wand's made up of a unique combination of wood, core and length; my wand and Voldemort's wand both share cores in the form of a phoenix-feather from the tale of the same phoenix, but his wand's thirteen and a half inches long and made of yew wood while mine's eleven inches long and made of holly, as an example."

"Your wand... shares a core with Voldemort's?" Sam repeated, looking uncertainly at Daniel with that same quizzical expression that she always got when presented with a new puzzle that she didn't immediately understand. "Is... that important?"

"Well, it does result in an interesting side-effect when the two of us fought with our wands," Daniel replied. "Basically, the two wands don't actually work properly against each other, with the result that, when Voldemort and I actually tried to cast a spell against our opponent, our wands linked and... well, I ended up 'forcing' his wand to reverse through all the spells it had performed previously."

"And... that meant?" Sam asked.

"From what Dumbledore said, since the wands wouldn't battle their 'brother', I ended up using force of will to make Voldemort's wand repeat the spells it had performed previously, to the extent that it generated ghostly... after-images, I guess is the best term... of the people Voldemort had killed with it," Daniel explained. "It also generated this... I guess the best term looking back is 'force field'... that cut me and him off from the rest of the Death Eaters, but..."

His voice trailed off as he looked over at Sam, a reflective expression on his face. "Hold on a minute..."

"You think that we could... duplicate the force field effect?" Sam asked, looking at Daniel with a slight smile as she followed his train of thought; the idea of opposing forces managing to cancel each other out did create some significant potential...

"Well, it won't work if Voldemort's changed wands since I last fought him- I'm not exactly clear on if him using a new body means that he's had to change his wand or if he's still able to use the old one-, but it could be worth looking into..." Daniel said, a slight smile on his face as he looked over at Sam while turning this theory over in his mind. "I mean, if we assume there's something that my wand and his wand share that makes spells cast with them react to each other in a certain manner, it could be possible to isolate it...."

Even as the conversation continued, Daniel would be the first to admit that he had no idea where he was going to go with this new line of inquiry, but he had a feeling that it was going to result in at least one very interesting new idea for fighting Voldemort...

As she sat behind her desk in the Ministry going over the files before her- Kingsley might have made an effective 'ghost Minister' in her absence, but there were always those forms that only she could sign off on-, Hermione allowed herself a few moments to reflect on the events of the last few days.

She wasn't sure what had been more shocking for her since these events had begun, quite frankly; learning that Voldemort was still alive, learning about the life that Harry had made for himself since she'd last seen him, discovering that aliens were real...

She hadn't been through this much of an emotional roller-coaster since she'd first learned that she was a witch, and even then the fact that she'd been a child had made it easier for her mind to adapt to the shift; this latest chain of events had come when she had been certain she knew what to expect of the world and had subsequently left her feeling like she'd been completely thrown for a loop.

Quite frankly, if she'd heard it from anyone else but Harry, she probably wouldn't have believed it; only the fact that Harry had developed a distinct distaste for people lying to him about what was happening after the nightmarish mess that had been his fifth year prior to Sirius's death had allowed her to even remotely contemplate that he'd been telling her the truth.

Of course, that still left the issue of why he'd stopped sending them cards to at least assure them that he was alive a few years ago to be answered, but Hermione was fairly sure that she'd learn the answer to that one eventually if it mattered.

With the last few forms still awaiting her attention having been filled in and filed away- after the mass clearings Kingsley and the Order had organised after Voldemort's 'death' and Harry's disappearance the Ministry was operating far better than it had before; with more muggle-borns given the opportunity to rise in the system under the new regime a few new methods of filing had been introduced, while the increased inter-office communication inspired by the old friendships formed in the D.A. meant that people relied more on each other to encourage their efforts rather than doing it all themselves-, Hermione turned her attention to the more personal matter she'd come back to attend to; consulting a few books on wizarding history that Bill Weasley had recommended to her a while back (She'd been contemplating a career as a curse-breaker at the time but never gotten around to reading them after Sirius's death) to see if she noticed anything new about them after... recent revelations.

It might be a relatively pointless investigation, she knew, but after Harry's revelation that the pyramids had been built by those 'Goa'uld' and the curses installed afterwards, she had to confess to being interested in how the Goa'uld might have had an impact on other areas of magical history. The Fountain of Youth alone had always been a bit of a question-mark for her- if there was a fountain that could make the drinker young again, why had Voldemort never even tried to find it-, but other possible angles were only just starting to occur to her; if you traced the discovery that the Egyptian pyramids had been constructed by aliens to its logical conclusion, that raised the question of what kind of role they'd played in the construction of other temples...

She felt like making sure that any other loose ends that cropped up today were dealt with as soon as possible anyway; as long as it was fairly quiet here so far, she might as well see about getting something to show for her efforts before she went back to the SGC.

Besides, if things did get as ugly as they had the potential to become- with Voldemort reborn once more and his Death Eaters now operating on an inter-galactic scale with access to technology that nobody in the wizarding world and relatively few people in the muggle world would have any idea how to cope with, Hermione felt fairly safe assuming that the worst would happen in the current situation-, she wanted to make sure that she'd drawn up a list of the best possible Aurors- as well as those in other fields of employment; Neville might be the Herbology professor now but he was still a more-than-competent duellist- to help them out if they needed it...

And contrary to what her subconscious might think, she was not doing this merely to avoid thinking about Cameron Mitchell and his devil-may-care smile combined with a genuine depth of passion that she hadn't seen in someone since Ron; her reasons for being here were totally legitimate!

She just wished that she could make herself believe that...

It might have been a relatively pointless thing to be proud of, but even with the current dual crisis of the Priors' continued presence in this galaxy on top of the return of this 'Moldiwart' sucker, Mitchell had to admit that he was rather enjoying the chance to show somebody around the SGC; after so long being the 'new guy'- even if he'd done what he could to prove himself in his new position-, it was a change to be the 'expert' for once.

Plus, of course, it was actually kind of cool listening to some of Lupin and Tonks's tales of the wizarding world, both back in Jackson's day and what had happened since he'd left; it was giving him a whole new insight into Jackson's character.

"So you're telling me that Jackson- Harry- whatever- travelled in time for the first time when he was thirteen?" Mitchell said, staring incredulously at the tale he'd just heard from Lupin.

"It was only a few hours backwards; it's not like it was a significant time frame," Lupin said, shrugging nonchalantly.

"Yeah, I know, but still, thirteen?" Mitchell repeated, shaking his head incredulously. "I mean, he might have gone back further when he went to 1969, but-"

"He went to 1969?" Tonks repeated incredulously. "How-?"

"Oh, there's this thing where the Stargate can be disrupted to send the user back to an earlier point in time if they go through it under certain conditions; it's a complicated story and it's not that important anyway," Mitchell said, before he walked over to a nearby door and opened it with a casual flourish, revealing a large room filled with all kinds of equipment. Lupin vaguely noted a few objects that looked like Teal'c's staff weapons sitting off to the side of the room, what seemed to be an elaborately-designed mirror with several large cracks in the glass, and a large gold box that put Lupin vaguely in mind of a sarcophagus from Egypt.

"This is just a storage area for some of the alien tech we've found in the last year or so; mostly the stuff we're either still working on figuring out or the stuff we don't need to bother about any more," Mitchell said, shrugging nonchalantly. "You'd be amazed how tricky it is to work out how some of these things work; it took us around seven years to crack this virtual reality thing the SGC found in the first year..."

"Virtual what?" Tonks asked in confusion.

"Virtual reality," Mitchell said with a casual shrug, indicating what looked like a large chair with a few cables sticking out around the part where a head would be if someone was sitting in the 'chair'. "Basically, you enter the information about the world and scenario you want to create into this thing, and it then uses that data to create a completely artificial world that's projected directly into the user's brain- that's where the cables come in; they're placed on your head and transmit the data directly- without them being consciously aware that it's not real; the people on the planet where they were discovered had been using those things for years without really knowing the difference before Jackson's team got them out, and we recently started using them as a system for performing training exercises... once we'd ironed the bugs out, anyway."

"Oh," Tonks said, pausing for a moment to study the rest of the machinery in the room around her before her eyes fell on a small-ish device in the corner of the room on top of a box. In appearance, it looked like a halved hexagon with a slight indent on the inner area, the 'interior' consisting of a four-levelled layout that reminded Tonks of a small flight of stairs with multiple buttons on it in a manner that reminded Tonks of the keyboards she'd seen in the SGC computers, with a small blue 'screen' of some sort positioned in the middle of the top 'level' of the device.

However, although the design of the object itself was relatively simple, there was something about the device itself that... felt... something...

"So, what's this?" she asked, trying to push that nagging feeling to the back of her mind as she indicated the device in question; given the scale of some of the other objects she'd seen in the room, this device seemed almost out of place given its small size.

"Oh, that?" Mitchell said, shrugging slightly as he glanced at the device. "Don't think we've gotten around to working out what that is yet; it's something Merlin left behind in Glastonbury-"

"Merlin?" Lupin repeated, spinning around to look incredulously at the colonel, unable to believe his ears despite his traditionally heightened senses as a werewolf. "As in, Merlin Merlin? King Arthur's Merlin? The wizard Merlin?"

"Oh, you mean you guys do know about him?" Mitchell said, looking at her with a brief smile. "I thought about asking about that earlier, but it never seemed like the right time-"

"I'm sorry, could you go back a few moments to the part where you knew about Merlin but didn't know about magic until this whole thing with Voldemort happened?" Tonks asked, waving a hand at Mitchell in frustration.

"He was an Ancient," Mitchell replied nonchalantly.

Despite himself, the lieutenant colonel had to admit to feeling slightly pleased with himself at the subsequently stunned expression that crossed the faces of his two new friends; after spending so long feeling as though he was the one who'd had the main shocks these last few days after learning that magic was real, there was something satisfying in being able to shake up the wizarding view of the world as well.

"An... an Ancient?" Lupin said incredulously at last. "As in, the race who created the Stargates? The race who... turned into energy to escape a plague?"

"Bingo," Mitchell replied, nodding at Lupin with a brief smile. "'Course, what we've got about him suggests that he was an Ancient who stayed human rather than Ascend himself, but he was definitely an Ancient..."

"Wait a minute, you're saying that the most famous wizard of all time... was an alien?" Tonks put in, waving a hand incredulously at the colonel as she indicated the device once again. "And he made-"

Before Tonks could finish her sentence, her waving hand came in contact with the device, causing it to suddenly glow with a brilliant white light that enveloped the storeroom. Before anyone could react, the light faded away as soon as it had appeared, leaving Lupin and Mitchell staring in confusion as Tonks slumped to the ground in front of them, her hair having gone from its previous shade of purple to a mousy brown and her breathing regular as though she'd just fallen asleep, the device now displaying a projection that Mitchell automatically recognised as Ancient writing.

"Huh," he said, looking at the Ancient writing now hovering above the device in surprise. "Now that's new..."

"It's... never done this before, I take it?" Lupin asked, looking over at Mitchell with barely-concealed apprehension.

"Nope," Mitchell replied with a brief shake of his head as he crouched down beside Tonks, briefly checking her pulse to confirm that she was still breathing before he turned his attention back to the writing before them. "Well, at least we got something out of this; now all we need to do is translate the stuff..."

It was only when he turned around again and realised that his arm had just passed right through the remains of the quantum mirror- kept here out of a lack of anywhere else to store it- that Mitchell realised the situation was more complicated than he'd initially assumed.