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: Well, here we are; the first chapter of my rewrite of 'The Scourge', which I hope will meet with your approval once I get further on and more into the central action of this plot (I apologise about the delay; things kept coming up with my other projects)

Truth and Revelations

Since magic had come back into his life, Daniel was never sure if he should be grateful or concerned about the changes that it had brought into his life. The discovery that Voldemort was still alive was a shock even before he knew that his old enemy was now a Goa'uld, but at the same time it was a relief to be able to use his full skills once again- just because he'd avoided using them out of fear and lack of practise didn't mean that it wasn't a relief to be able to do everything he was capable of once again-, and he definitely enjoyed the chance to work with his old friends once again...

In the end, however, the thing that really sucked about this situation was the fact that, even after they'd convinced the IOA of the threat posed by Voldemort's continued existence, they hadn't been able to get a significant amount of resources diverted to the task of searching for the missing Death Eaters. Questioning Bellatrix after Hestia's extraction had failed to provide them with any kind of new information; not only did Bellatrix retain her insane loyalty to her 'master', but even when they'd attempted to interrogate her via Legilimency or even technological methods, her fractured mind had made it virtually impossible to get anything useful out of her. Whether it was the sheer scale of what she'd experienced as Hestia's host shattering her already-unstable mind due to the scale of Hestia's own delusions and insanity, or simply her original insanity being pushed even further, nobody knew, but any attempts to get information out of Bellatrix had so far been pointless.

Their inability to keep the existence of magic secret from the IOA had been one of the more frustrating parts of this; even if Jack had helped them deal with the questions about why Daniel hadn't been using his abilities to help out earlier, they were starting to express a greater interest in seeing about recruiting more wizards for Stargate teams, regardless of the risks involved in letting more of their offworld enemies learn about magic; Daniel had mainly managed to keep the truth about his abilities secret so far because he'd spent so much time learning about how the Goa'uld operated, but you couldn't put someone completely unused to their current enemies in this kind of situation and expect them to be perfect on their first time. When taking into account that even the SGC knew comparatively little about the Priors even after almost a year of trying to study them, it was increasingly clear that they had to try new methods of defending against them aside from their 'anti-Prior' device, particularly since that only stopped the Prior from using their powers for a time while still leaving them with the challenge of taking the Prior out, particularly when they had to try and question them.

Even if the part of Daniel that would always be Harry wanted to focus on Voldemort and the Death Eaters, the rest of him knew that he couldn't forget the threat posed by the Ori as well; they might be less of an immediate threat at the moment, but their distance just meant that it would take them longer to be a threat, while their advanced technology meant that it was inevitable that they'd find a way to come to this galaxy in force.

As much as he wanted to convince the SGC and the IOA to focus on the threat from his personal past, they had to focus on the threats posed to them in the present as well... which meant, annoyingly enough, that they had to go along with this new order.

"They want you to babysit a bunch of political observers?" Fred said, looking incredulously at the group of people sitting around Daniel's office; given the relative size of the room, it had been SG-1 and SG-M's unofficial meeting-place when they wanted to talk on their own without the hassle of 'booking' the main briefing room. "That's like asking the Order to keep an eye on Umbridge!"

"Except that Umbridge was genuinely incompetent with nothing on her mind but her own agenda where at least some of the IOA are willing to listen to us even if they don't always agree with our immediate policies," Sam said, looking over at the joke-shop owner. "I don't like having to do this any more than you'd have liked looking after Umbridge, Fred- from what Daniel told us she sounds foul by any definition-, but this isn't the time to worry about things like that; we've got to keep them satisfied if we're going to stay in operation."

"Why is that actually an issue, anyway?" Tonks asked, looking over at Sam. "I mean, I get that you need a lot of power to keep that Stargate running in the first place, but what about everything else?"

"Hey, as much as we'd like to say we do all the alien-fighting for noble purposes, we do still need to have some way of earning a living and paying the bills once all's said and done," Mitchell said, shrugging slightly apologetically as he looked over at the Metamorphagus. "Add in the budget needed to keep constructing the F-304 spaceships, the resources we need to study some of the things we find out there, setting up long-term outposts on some particularly significant planets..."

"The cost piles up, huh?" George said with a smile.

"To say the least," Sam confirmed. "It wasn't that significant a concern when we defeated the Goa'uld and weren't at war any more, but when we accidentally revealed our existence to the Ori, the politicians were reluctant to allow us to retain our pre-existing budget, given that their distance from this galaxy meant that the Ori didn't seem to be a priority threat. Faced with some politicians arguing that our budget should be lowered, General Landry was only able to arrange a compromise relationship where the International Oversight Advisory was established to provide civilian oversight into our actions and ensure that we could justify every expenditure in our budget; the alternative would have been to lower our budget until we could actively prove we needed what we had been allocated earlier, and I think we can all agree that wouldn't have worked."

"So, in other words, if you don't play nice with these people they could potentially shut you down and claim it's because you're not doing your job properly?" Hermione asked, rolling her eyes as Daniel nodded in confirmation of her assessment. "God, it's Umbridge and Fudge all over again..."

"Except that the IOA are just blinkered rather than blind; they acknowledge that the threat is out there, but they're just sometimes more concerned with dealing with it their way rather than letting us deal with it our way," Daniel said, looking at her with a reassuring smile. "It's still annoying, I know, but we've grown somewhat used to dealing with them; at least while we're away, you're still here to help out if you get any further news of Voldemort."

"Yeah, come to that, am I the only one worried that the guy's been so quiet?" Fred asked, looking uncertainly over at Daniel. "I mean, we haven't heard a thing from him in weeks..."

"In all fairness, it's a big galaxy and we still haven't explored all of it; it's possible that Voldemort's been attacking worlds that we just haven't found yet," Daniel said, shrugging in a resignation that only those who knew him best would have recognised as his effort to restrain frustration. "Still... maybe we should start considering trying to take a look at his mind again..."

"Hold that until the next mission's over, OK, Jackson?" Mitchell said, looking firmly at his friend. "I get the frustration, but this isn't the time for you to try and hack the bad guy's mind; we've got to deal with what we've been officially assigned to do before we can try to find the 'Dork Lord' again."

"'Dork Lord'?" Hermione repeated, looking at Mitchell with a smile.

"Hey, I've dealt with an alien snake who poses as a god in the past; I'm not going to call some jumped-up wizard with a snake fetish who basically possessed another snake to escape his death a Dark Lord of anything," Mitchell said, looking over at Hermione with a smile of his own. "Besides, we've got to focus on the positives; we found a cure to the Prior's plague and dealt with it well enough."

"And it has been some time since the last reported outbreak," Teal'c added.

"But that doesn't mean that we can afford to get carried away," Hermione said, staring around at the others. "After all, Voldemort stayed underground for a year after his first resurrection and that didn't make him any less dangerous; when you take the scale of the territory that the Ori are trying to conquer into account, along with their immortality meaning that they've got time to plan for the long-term, that doesn't exactly mean that they've given up."

"Indeed," Teal'c said, nodding in acknowledgement at the Minister of Magic.

"Well, we know what we've got to do right now, so let's focus on that before we tackle the main issue of the wizard-possessed Goa'uld," Mitchell said, standing up to clap his hands together as he looked at his teammates with a smile. "SG-M can hit the books, while SG-1 handle the babysitting duties; maybe you guys can even take our ruin visit that we got pulled from while we're at it."

"Unlikely," Hermione said, smiling in a teasing manner at her new friend. "In case you're forgetting, you... 'called dibs', I believe the term is, on the only archaeologist either of us have?"

"Oh yeah..." Mitchell said, looking back at Daniel before shrugging at Hermione. "Well, that's life, I suppose."

"Well, just try and avoid losing your temper with anyone, and I'm sure you'll be fine," Lupin said, grinning over at Daniel.

"Trust me, self-control in the face of ignorant idiots isn't the problem these days," Daniel said, smiling in understanding at his father's friend. "The only question is whether they'll listen to us if things go wrong..."

As he stood in front of the Stargate a couple of hours later, Daniel had to wonder how this whole meeting was going to go; he hadn't seen any of the IOA since he'd explained his history in the wizarding world to them so many weeks ago, but he wasn't going to even try and kid himself into thinking that they would be willing to let him completely off for keeping that story quiet for so long.

Still, for the moment, the rest of the IOA representatives seemed to be more concerned with their first actual sight of the Stargate- why was it that the people responsible for controlling Earth's use of this device had so little real interest in the Stargate itself- than asking him about the secrets of his family past; he'd tackle that issue when the time came.

"It's... uh... it's much bigger than I expected," Chapman, the British representative, said, looking uncomfortably at the Stargate.

"We get that a lot," Landry said with a smile.

"Mr Chapman, Mr LaPierre, Miss Shen," Woolsey said, indicating the team standing alongside the Stargate, "I'd like you to meet our escort to the Gamma site, SG-1; Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, Lieutenant Colonel Sam Carter, Teal'c-"

"And Doctor Daniel Jackson, AKA... Harry Potter, I believe it was before you changed your name," the woman Woolsey had introduced as Shen said, stepping forward to smile at him. "Ph.D. in Archaeology, Anthropology, and Philology. The man who solved the riddle of the Stargate."

"Shen Xiaoyi," Daniel replied, nodding politely back at her, making a note to ask about her sudden interest in his new academic history even if he was grateful that she wasn't mentioning his wizarding heritage; he might have had to reveal his past, but he wanted to be respected for what he'd legitimately learned rather than for anything he'd done primarily because circumstances had forced it upon him (He might have wanted to destroy Voldemort whatever else he'd discovered, but the lack of personal choice in how their conflict had begun still annoyed him after all these years). "Graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Former attaché to the Chinese mission in the United States."

"Your Mandarin is very good," Shen said suddenly in Chinese.

"Not as good as your English," Daniel replied, feeling increasingly if subtly uncomfortable at this turn of events; Shen seemed to be polite so far, but there was definitely something

"As it should be," Shen said, before she indicated Mitchell with a slight smile. "What do you think about him?"

"We're still observing him," Daniel said out of a lack of anything else he could politely say, prompting an amused laugh from Shen.

"Yeah, that's funny," Mitchell said, before speaking his next sentence in Mandarin as he glared at Daniel. "Get lost."

"Uh... sorry," Daniel said, looking apologetically at Mitchell (He was almost grateful that Voldemort's resurrection had numbed most of the surprise he might feel; after a shock like that, learning that Mitchell could speak another language was a relatively minor surprise) as Harriman informed them that the final chevron had been locked and the Stargate burst into life. Daniel noted with some satisfaction that all of the IOA representatives appeared to be at least impressed at the sight of the wormhole that had now formed

"The Gamma Site is twenty-four thousand light-years from here," Sam said, stepping up onto the ramp to address the various IOA delegates. "But once we step through the event horizon, it will take us less than one second to get there."

"After you," Mitchell said, nodding briefly at Shen, the Chinese delegate walking up the ramp as the British and French delegates did the same, followed by Mitchell and Teal'c before Daniel walked through the gate himself.

In a strange way, he was actually looking forward to this; after so long worrying about Voldemort or the Priors, it would be a relief to deal with an enemy that he'd been tackling since he was fifteen, particularly since these politicians were mainly just out to do their job and only might be out to inconvenience him rather than definitively wanting him under their control...