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: Just to fill in those who want to know, Mitchell's group encountered Valencia and Ramus- the kids playing at Arthur and Mordred- like they did in the original episode, but it didn't really differ from the main plot so I decided to jump to them arriving at the library anyway
Truth and Revelations
As he walked up the path to the simple hut that apparently contained Merlin's library- the building was tucked away at the end of a back-alley on the village outskirts, but given Merlin's reputation here that certainly fit what they knew of the situation so far-, Daniel wondered how he should feel about this particular turn of events.
Ever since he'd become Daniel Jackson, he'd never really used his research skills to explore the past of the wizarding world beyond the brief trips he'd made to Diagon Alley and other locations to check a few historical texts and confirm his theories about the construction of the pyramids- even if he'd left the wizarding world, he hadn't wanted to accidentally expose it by drawing attention to something that could only be explained through magic-, and now here he was, about to explore the library of Merlin himself...
To say that he was intimidated was an understatement; he was just grateful that Hermione was on the planet as well so that he wouldn't have to worry about the wizarding world 'missing out' on a discovery like this.
"Nice place, huh?" Mitchell said, breaking into Daniel's train of thought as he walked up to join the others, indicating the teenage girl and the young boy that had joined their group; evidently he and his team had found a couple of local guides before Hermione or the Weasley twins could try a search themselves. "Oh, this is Valencia and Ramus; they helped direct us to this place."
"Thanks," Tonks said, nodding at the teenage girl in approval, smiling slightly at the sight of . "Saves us having to find these guys."
"You are welcome," Valencia replied, nodding awkwardly at Tonks before she turned to look at Mitchell. "But you cannot get through; the door is magiced."
"Really?" Hermione said, smiling slightly as she reached out with one hand to touch the door, only to pull her hand sharply back when she was met with a crackle of energy for her efforts (It wasn't anything explicitly magical- it could just as easily be those 'force field' things she'd heard Daniel say that the SGC had access to, even if she hadn't really seen them in action yet-, but it was still something out of the ordinary).
"There is a key," Valencia explained. "No one dare use it."
"And where would we get this key?" Lupin asked, looking at her with a polite, inquiring manner that Daniel wondered if he'd acquired from his time as a teacher or his time as a father.
"It is kept in the village archives," Valencia replied.
"Ah," Fred said, looking grimly over at the others. "Why do I get the feeling that they aren't going to be very keen to give us that key given their attitude towards Merlin?"
"Well, thanks for your help," Daniel said, nodding slightly at Valencia and Ramus as they looked at him. "We... appreciate what you've told us, anyway."
As the children nodded and walked away, Daniel slipped his wand out of his sleeve and turned to look at the other wizards with a slight smile.
"Shall we?" he asked.
"Can't hurt to try, anyway," George confirmed, as he and the other wizards drew their own wands. "If it doesn't work, it's not like we'll lose much by it, anyway; we'll just have to try and get that key and hope for the best."
"Right then," Tonks said, aiming her wand at the door before them. "On three; one... two... three!"
"Alohamora!" the seven wizards said, their wands focused on the lock in front of them. For a moment the shield crackled as though it was trying to stop their efforts, but it finally ceased its 'struggle' as the shield seemed to be suddenly sucked into the keyhole, which gave off a brief white glow before the door opened in front of them.
"Oh my God..." Hermione whispered, looking over at her friends with a near-ecstatic smile. "We're about to see Merlin's Library..."
"Yeah, I know; cool, huh?" George said.
"Cool?" Hermione repeated, looking at the Wesley twin incredulously. "George, 'cool' isn't the word for it; this is... is...!"
She paused for a moment, waving her hands in the air as though trying to find the right word for what she was trying to say, before she gave up and turned around to practically run into the door before her, followed by the rest of the group.
Once inside the building, Daniel wasn't sure if he should be excited or disappointed. The thick layers of dust and spider-webs around the room didn't exactly encourage the idea of this place as a location where a powerful wizard had once worked, but a few of the tools on the table, such as a metallic globe, and what he could see of the book titles in the dim light coming through the open door and the boarded-up windows did seem to encourage the idea that Merlin had once worked here.
"Dark, isn't it?" Mitchell commented, pulling out his torch to examine his surroundings.
"Let me; lumos," Lupin put in, raising his wand to illuminate the room more fully. Noting a few candles still scattered around the room, the rest of the wizards lit the candles with a few quick spells, revealing more of the books scattered around the room, along with several shelves full of scrolls and parchment.
"Nice..." Fred said, smiling at their current location, before his face fell as he processed the sheer amount of material now available to them. "Aw, nuts... this is gonna take a while, isn't it?"
"Probably," Daniel said, picking up one of the books and blowing on it to remove the dust that it had gathered over the years. "Still, you know what they say; many hands make light work."
"In every sense of the word," Fred added, indicating the now-illuminated candles with a slight smile, only for his face to fall as everyone turned to stare at him and his brain processed what he'd just said. "Hey, c'mon, I'm on another planet in Merlin's library looking for information on a weapon that can basically kill gods; I think I'm entitled to have a bit of trouble thinking of a good joke or two..."
In a sense, the fact that one of the Weasley twins was having trouble making a joke was one of the most amusing details of the current situation for Daniel, even if it was more of a black humour; the idea that even they had trouble finding something to laugh at after some of their products during the last war against Voldemort didn't exactly inspire confidence.
"Anyone found anything yet?" Tonks asked, looking up from the parchment she and Lupin had been studying for the last couple of hours since they'd gained access to the library. While some of the parchments were written in Ancient, there were enough examples of old English and similar Earth-based languages included in the various texts that most of the wizards involved could at least understand the basics of what they were reading, and Hermione and Lupin had included a few translation spells to make it easier if they found anything that looked particularly promising (The spells could only provide a basic idea of what the original text said, but that was often enough to at least determine if it was worthwhile for Daniel to take a closer look).
"Nothing obvious, but it's... really rather interesting," Daniel said, as he indicated the book that he was currently reading. "This text discusses Merlin's prophetic abilities, although it seems to be tied into the idea that he actually saw the future because he aged backwards in time rather than actual divination..."
"Is that actually possible?" Hermione asked suddenly. "I mean, you did mention that you've travelled in time once or twice- beyond what a Time-Turner would be capable of, anyway-, so..."
"Travelled in time physically, yes; this is something different," Daniel said, even as he contemplatively studied the text. "The point is that we know that a lot of the folklore we take for granted even in the wizarding world was inspired by the Ancients- Avalon, Atlantis, that kind of thing..."
"Are you saying that there's time-travel technology here?" Sam asked, looking uncertainly at Daniel.
"I'm saying that there could be anything here; there's no way to know what Merlin could have here," Daniel clarified. "We don't know what kind of connection Merlin had to the wizarding world, or even what he could do on his own without technological assistance- some of his feats could have been accomplished with technology rather than his magical abilities-; he definitely had some powers, but I just can't be sure where they came from or what they were specifically..."
"Well, I hate to break it to you folks," Mitchell said, walking over to take a closer look at a bookshelf in a small alcove in the corner of the room, "but I'm not too keen on us finding anything like that here; the only technology I'm seeing is a bunch of dusty old books-"
As he attempted to move a book from a shelf, the book's motion triggered a strange clicking sound, and the entire bookcase suddenly slid off to the side, revealing a long dark corridor behind it.
"And a secret passage," Mitchell finished unnecessarily, walking into the corridor as the rest of the group walked over to join him in his examination of this new discovery. "Alright, there's another chamber."
"Am I the only one thinking that this place is a bit bigger inside than it looked?" Fred asked, looking over at his brother with a slight smile.
"Nope," George confirmed, grinning broadly as they took in the door before them. "Let's see what we've got in there..."
As they moved along the newly-discovered corridor, the wizards were initially left feeling slightly disappointed at the pitch-black room they found at the other end, but this disappointment faded before they could even increase the intensity of their lumos charms as a fire place burst into life just as Sam walked by it, followed by torches lighting up on the room's walls all around them as they watched. In a matter of seconds, the room was revealed to be at least the size of the Gryffindor common room, with a large device in the centre of the room that reminded the SGC members of the Ancient control consoles used for controlling the Ancient time machine or the weapon at Dakara.
They might not know what they were dealing with in this library yet, but at last they had a clearer idea that they were on the right lines to find what they were looking for at the moment.
"It's not some kind of puzzle, is it?" Tonks asked, looking over at Daniel in slight exasperation. "Because I'm telling you right now, I am not in the mood for puzzles; I'm an auror, not a curse-breaker-"
"It's not a puzzle," Daniel interjected, looking thoughtfully at the massive panel before him as he studied the various squares with his torch. "It's an Ancient control device; we've encountered other variations of this kind of technology over the years."
"What does it control?" Lupin asked.
"I have no idea," Daniel said, stepping onto a platform just in front of the console, allowing himself a slight smile as the platform lit up; at least this way he had more light to work with.
"I've seen this type of interface before," he explained, mainly for his wizarding friends' benefit than for that of his teammates (He didn't like making that kind of distinction, but the fact remained that it did exist; even if he was grateful to be working with them again, he had been away from the wizarding world for several years). "Activating it is a matter of correctly interpreting these symbols..."
The sound of a scream from outside quickly cut off further conversation, a brief exchange of glances all that was required for the team to come to the decision to turn around and head back towards the passage; with the situation the way it stood right now, they couldn't afford to take any chances if something like that was happening.
It was only when they came out the door of the library to find two villagers that neither of them had ever seen before, lying on the ground with no obvious signs of disease or physical wounds that could have been the cause of their demise.
Damnit... Daniel thought to himself, as the villagers turned to look at the group who had just left Merlin's library, their eyes narrowing in obvious hostility at the sight of this clear violation of what was clearly one of the village's central rules.
Add this on to what they'd heard earlier about the library being protected by a curse, and Daniel didn't need to have Merlin's implied ability to see the future to know that this mission had just become significantly more complicated...
"How could you do this?" Meurik asked, slamming a hand on his desk as he glared at the assembled teams, the group once again sitting around a table in the tavern. "You were warned that the library was cursed-!"
"Look, it wasn't meant to go down like that," Mitchell said, looking indignantly at the other man. "We figured that if the Knight was going to appear it would be in the chamber, and he wouldn't go after anybody but us.
"You were warned of the danger and you refused to believe," Meurik said, showing no sign that he particularly cared about their reasoning. "And you awakened the curse."
"The Black Knight is not part of any curse," Daniel said, not even needing to feign his exasperation with the other man's attitude; he might know of magic himself, but he'd also encountered enough examples of technological effects capable of duplicating magic over the last decade to know when he was and wasn't dealing with it, and this was one of those times. "He isn't magical and he isn't unbeatable."
"Your world as well as countless others are in danger of being overrun by an enemy far more powerful than you could ever imagine," Teal'c added, staring at Meurik with his usual intensity. "They are called the Ori, and they will destroy anyone who does not kneel before them."
"We learned a long time ago Merlin was working on a weapon that could be used against them and the key to finding that weapon is inside that library," Daniel continued, hoping that the urgency of his tone would convince Meurik to show some degree of leniency for their mistake; surely Kinsey and Fudge had been enough incompetently arrogant government officials for any one man to have to deal with...
"I have never seen nor heard of these Ori, but we have witnessed the power of the Black Knight," Meurik said resolutely. "Leave this village. Take the curse with you."
With that, he walked out of the tavern, leaving the two teams to stand there in silence as they contemplated what had just happened; if Daniel hadn't had over two decades of experience to fall back on, he was fairly sure this was one of the times when Harry would have flown into a rage of indignation at peoples' inability to listen to him.
"Do you think revealing that we can do magic would change anything?" George asked at last, looking uncertainly at the rest of the group. "Y'know, we try and convince them that we can protect them from the curse now that we know there's something to protect them against...?"
"Given Merlin's negative reputation among these people, I wouldn't count on it; given the way our luck's been going lately, we could end up being prosecuted for his crimes," Lupin responded, shaking his head grimly. "Honestly... we find ourselves somewhere totally outside the Statute of Secrecy, and we still can't tell anyone about ourselves..."
"You know," Hermione put in, looking pointedly over at Lupin, "as Minister for Magic, I really should object to your desire to violate one of the first rules of our society..."
"Oh, sorry-" Lupin began.
"But given that I wish I could do it myself, I can't really complain; it would sometimes make things a bit easier," the smartest Gryffindor of several generations finished, smiling reassuringly at Lupin before she looked back over at Daniel with her usual expression of cool professionalism. "What do you think?"
"Well, our best bet right now would probably be for you, me and Sam to try and get back into that library while the rest of the team try and find some means of shutting down the Black Knight," Daniel said, nodding speculatively as he looked around at the others.
"Is it really worth the effort?" George asked. "I mean, I didn't really see anything obvious down there, and we're not exactly welcome here any more..."
"Which is exactly what Merlin wanted," Hermione said, snapping her fingers as she smiled in understanding.
"Huh?" Fred said, looking over at his near-sister-in-law inquiringly.
"Well, he probably set up the Black Knight to attack the village rather than the chamber in order to incite terror and thus discourage anyone from going into the library in the first place," Hermione explained. "I mean, killing anyone who went inside the chamber doesn't really stop anyone from being willing to risk their lives by going inside, but the possibility of risking the lives of others might stop anyone doing anything themselves..."
"Unless, of course, we're dealing with the likes of Voldemort and his Death Eaters, who'd probably try and take the library and kill all the villagers anyway..." Daniel added, a grim expression on his face as he spoke.
"Oh, right..." Hermione said, looking awkwardly at her friend before her eyes widened in shock. "Hold on; you mean-?"
"I'm not saying that it's likely- there's no evidence that Voldemort or anybody among the Death Eaters even knows what they're really dealing with by using the Stargates if Malfoy's rant was anything to go by, and it's not like we have any reason to think that they know anything about Merlin apart from the usual legends in the first place-, but if he's out there now, with the Ori trying to reach this galaxy..." Daniel said, his voice trailing off as he allowed his friends to fill in the blanks in his statement for themselves.
"Don' exactly bode well fer our chances, huh?" Hagrid finished for his old friend.
"Let's just say I'd rather we prepared for the worst rather than letting it happen," Daniel clarified. "The point is that Merlin designed this 'Black Knight' program because he was worried that someone might stumble on to the solution, which means there is a solution, and it's inside that chamber."
"A shut-off switch," Sam said, her head nodding slightly in understanding.
"Exactly," Daniel confirmed.
"Well, that's great," Mitchell said, his tone making it clear that he didn't actually think it was himself, "but how does it help us now?"
"I don't know," Daniel said, shaking his head in brief frustration before he looked back at the group. "As I said, I think that our best chance to find a solution is if Hermione, Sam and I try and look around the library while you try and find some way to turn the Knight off out here."
"How did you stop the last one you ran into?" Tonks asked, looking curiously around at the SG-1 members.
"Well, I drew a sword from a stone and impaled the thing," Mitchell replied with a casual shrug.
"Why do I get the feeling this won't be that simple?" Fred suggested, looking uncertainly at his brother.
"You have experienced life as an associate of SG-1, Fred Weasley," Teal'c replied, a slight smile on his lips that was at odds with the grim expression in his eyes. "Our lives are regularly extremely difficult."
"Look, let's just see what we can do here, OK?" Hermione said, looking urgently at the group around her. "Harry's right; if we and Sam look around Merlin's library, the rest of you can maybe leave the village, cast a few Disillusionment Charms on yourselves, sneak back in, and then just... try and stay away from anywhere where you'd be obvious to people until we can figure out some way to shut down the Black Knight."
"Disillusionment Charms?" Teal'c asked.
"Basic camouflage spell, in essence; it doesn't turn you invisible, but it helps you 'blend in' to otherwise monochromatic backgrounds to a degree so that you can hide more easily so long as you don't do anything to really draw attention to yourself," Hermione explained, before she turned her attention back to Daniel and Sam. "Anyway, we'd better get on with this; if we look like we're leaving on our own, it should discourage Meurik from wanting to make sure we've left."
"If we look like we're obeying him, he probably won't try and make sure of it?" Mitchell said, looking slightly quizzically at Hermione as though seeking confirmation of his assessment.
"That was basically what I was thinking, yes," Hermione replied with a slight shrug. "It's a bit of a gambit, but if you have a better idea I'd appreciate it."
"Well..." Mitchell said, looking between the group around him before he finally shrugged. "It's worth a shot, right?"
"'Cept fer me," Hagrid added, from where he was uncomfortably squatting down in a corner of the bar. "Those charms wouldn' really be much use on me- bit tall to blend in ter anything, after all-, even if gian' blood didn't make it hard to use 'em on me in the firs' place; maybe I could head back ter the SGC an' fill 'em in on what we're dealin' with?"
"Sounds good to me," George confirmed.
"Just make it clear that we've got a plan for finding what we came here for, and we'll be there as soon as we can, OK?" Mitchell said, looking pointedly at the half-giant gamekeeper, Hagrid responding with a confirming nod.
Daniel just wished that he could shake the feeling that this wasn't going to be as easy as they were trying to pretend it was; even if they could figure out a way to shut down the Black Knight, they still had a lot of library to go through to find something relevant to their search, and he didn't even have any guarantee that they'd find that (Even if he was definitely planning to offer Hermione access to the library once they had dealt with the immediate threat of Voldemort; if anyone deserved to read the secrets of that library, it was her, and the IOA couldn't exactly object if the wizards were going to be helping them in the long term)...
He sometimes wished for the old days when they'd been fighting the Goa'uld; their goal then might have been larger-scale, but they also had a clear idea how to do it and no need to worry about more complicated plans to do so.
Still... when he'd gone back to the wizarding world, he'd known that things were practically guaranteed to become more difficult before they got better; so far, their assistance had proven useful, and that was the main thing.