SGC Conference Room

The air was thick with anticipation. No one had known what to expect from this small group from one of the most technologically advanced races that ever evolved, but it certainly hadn't been a group of twenty something's with British accents.

They had just finished introductions and no one was sure what to say now. Daniel had a million questions and was having trouble deciding what he should and should not ask during a first contact situation. Finally he settled on…

"How is it that you have British accents? As far as we know the language transfer technology in the gate interacts with your own brain's language processors, so we should be hearing you speak in our own dialect of English, even though you are speaking Alteran. Right?"

Councilor of Science Luna fielded this question.

"You would be correct, if we were in fact speaking Alteran. We are speaking English however, and as far as our accent goes, I'll leave that for the High Councilor to answer."

Harry suddenly had thirteen pairs of eyes all asking 'how' at once directed at him.

"Daniel, you've asked the question I was least looking forward to answering and the one that will require the most information to explain. I don't think you are going to be too well pleased with this, but the short answer is that we were born in Britain."

Silence

"There are Alterans on Atlantis from nearly every country on Earth, actually."

More silence

"I'm sorry, but WHAT?" Jack couldn't contain himself any longer. "What the hell do you mean you were born on Earth? This was supposed to be a First Contact, not a family reunion. I think you should start at the beginning."

"Very well, General O'Neill, but the beginning began fifty million years ago. To save time perhaps you should tell me what you know of our people."

General O'Neill didn't look pleased. It was clearly a tactic designed to turn their own fact finding questions against them, but on the other hand fifty million years is an awful lot of history to cover… Jack looked to Daniel.

"Oh. Me? Alright then…"

"Of course Daniel, who else in this room can even read their language? Besides what you've picked up so far Elizabeth, of course," Jack added at the last minute under Dr. Weir's quelling glare.

"Hmm, alright. So, we know that you fled your home galaxy to escape the religious persecution of the Ori."

"Stop there please. The Ori are only mentioned in the database on Atlantis, and nowhere else. Not even in our Repositories. Our ancestors made sure of it. The less people who know of them the less powerful they are. How have you even heard that name?!"

Daniel looked like an entire universe of guilt had just slammed into him.

"I… we… There was a device. We didn't know what it did. But the communication stones were already preset for the Ori galaxy, and by the time I realized what was happening, I had already told them too much."

"The Ori know there are humans in this galaxy. And others. This is bad, Daniel. Those among our people who have ascended have kept their sight away from here, but now that they know they will come. And when they convert enough the Ascended Cold War won't be so cold any longer."

Even Hermione, Councilor of State, was shocked by what Harry said.

"Harry, how could you possibly know…"

"There are a lot of things that the Atlantis database released to me on the day I was named High Councilor, Hermione and I still can't tell you about most of them, and a good portion of them have to do with our Ascended brethren. They will not interfere, but they saw no reason not to give what was left of us a decent understanding of our place in the universe. However if the Ori are active in this galaxy there is no need for me to keep that secret any longer. We'll talk about going to war later, yes? Please continue Dr. Jackson."

"Just Daniel, please. And uhm… okay. So, your people traveled, possibly for a very long time before you reached this galaxy. You made a new home on Earth and named it Terra. Your population grew and prospered and you found three other races to call your Allies. Your Empire stretched across the galaxy until about five million years ago when a plague struck your population that you couldn't cure. Eventually Atlantis was the only place still quarantined from the plague. Those who avoided catching it all congregated there and you left Earth, and the Milky Way for parts unknown after activating the device on Dakara."

"Dakara?" The interruption came from Neville this time. As their Councilor for Agriculture & Industry he always collected data about important or useful planets.

"Yes, it is the name of the planet where the device you left behind is located. It is now the central seat of the Free Jaffa Nation."

"You have removed enough control crystals to render the device inert I hope?"

"Yes, but it was nearly activated by the Gua'uld Ba'al at the behest of Anubis."

"That would've been catastrophic. Our people have made many mistakes in the past. More than you are currently aware of, but leaving that thing where any of the younger races could access a device of such power was probably the worst."

O'Neill couldn't leave that one alone. After the revelation that these four were born on Earth he had signaled Walter to begin facial recognition and background checks on the four of them. The results had come back on his palmtop, and he wasn't going to be called a 'Young Race' by a twenty-four year old delinquent from Surrey. He put up with quite enough of that from the Nox, thank-you very much.

"Well, Mr. Potter, we at least were responsible enough to deactivate the device. However the governments of Earth are not prepared to leave Atlantis in the hands of a twenty-four year old delinquent from Surrey no matter how 'young' you think we are."

"I haven't been Harry Potter for six years, General. I would ask you not to refer to me by that name again. You have answered my questions, so I will fill in the pieces you are missing. If at the end of our discussion you still feel the need to threaten me we will leave, taking every piece of our peoples technology with us when we do. That includes your gate as well as the outpost in Antarctica."

Dr. Weir was pissed. General O'Neill had just threatened an Ancient. They really had no idea what these people were capable of. She was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now about their planet of origin because they had somehow managed to get off-world and all the way to Atlantis. She wanted to hear their story, so before O'Neill could make it worse by adding fuel to the fire, she took over the conversation.

"Perhaps, General, you should leave the diplomacy to the diplomats in the room? Before you single-handedly tank this program? In case you forgot General, these four people stepped through the gate from Atlantis. No matter where they were born that alone is decent evidence of who they claim to be. Let's allow them to speak their peace."

"Thank you Dr. Weir," continued Harry. "You are correct General. The governments of Earth are not going to be pleased with most of what I have to say. Well… tough. We are our own Nation in a different Galaxy. Earth has no jurisdiction over us. I was born July 31st, 1980 in Godric's Hollow, Wales. But that is jumping ahead almost five million years in our story. Atlantis made its way to a nearby dwarf galaxy. The idea was to eventually find a cure to the plague and re-inhabit this galaxy, which contained one Ally and was nearer another. "

"The Nox and the Asgard?" This time the interruption came from Daniel Jackson.

"The Nox showed themselves to you? Hmmm. They aren't known for interacting with other species. That impresses me more than any Alliance you claim with the Asgard."

"What do you mean, claim? I don't know who you think you are kid, but we've saved the Asgard's little gray butts quite a few times. In turn they've given us technology to aid us."

"Ah. I see. They are progressing you, testing you. Seeing what you do with the limited advanced technology they have given you. Not allying themselves with you. That would be impossible. I know I've been in another galaxy for the last six years, but tell me, did the countries of this planet all dissolve into the UN? Who is the recognized leader of Earth? I'm sitting in a US Air Force installation under Cheyenne Mountain. I know for a fact that the Asgard have laws against allying with any single country on a non-unified world, especially with a military program of said government. To do so would lead you to war with your neighbors and the probable destruction of this planet. Can we continue history before moving on to current events?"

Only Jack, Daniel and Elizabeth had been participating in this conversation so far, and Sam was eager for Harry to get on with it. The sooner they got through all this inanity the sooner she could corner the blonde who was apparently the Councilor of Science. She nodded encouragingly and hoped her true intentions were too obvious. Harry took the opportunity to continue whether her motivations or not.

"We were never able to return. They were a broken people when they arrived, who had just witnessed the destruction of an Empire numbering in the billions. Our people started focusing more and more on ascension and less on the world around them. They seeded life throughout their new home on hundreds of worlds, just as they had here on Terra. They were hoping to watch the evolutionary process that made them into the people they were so they could progress their own evolution faster in order to ascend. They did many experiments towards this goal."

Harry trailed off and shuddered.

"On one world they found a sentient insect species. They called it the Iratus Bug. They had a hive mind, so one or two weren't ever a problem, but several hundred could think and reason together. What really fascinated the Alterans at the time was this creature was able to feed off of the life force of another creature. It attaches itself to any section of its victim that has a lot of blood vessels. Under the arm, the neck, the inner thigh. It then, quite literally, drinks your life away from you. By the time it detaches all that is left is a corpse that looks decades old."

"This FASCINATED THEM? What the hell is wrong with you people?" General O'Neill yelled as he stood up. Elizabeth jumped up to yell back at him in defense of their guests, but Harry motioned for her to sit back down, and he would handle it.

"They were… too old. They had seen the fall of their people and all they really wanted was to ascend and leave it all behind. They were detached from the physical world; not as compassionate or understanding as they once were. They became cold. I'm afraid it gets worse General."

"Of course it does."

"Well, the process of ascension is essentially removing your mind and life from your flesh. It's taking your life force and your mind in hand and stepping out of the physical confines that bind us. They thought if they could mimic the abilities of the Iratus Bug, they would be able to ascend with ease, so they began splicing Iratus DNA with Human DNA."

"And lemme guess, instead you got friggen SPACE VAMPIRES!"

"Yes General. They are called the Wraith and they are still around. They gained a lot from their insect cousins. They have a slit in the hand with which they feed directly from the chest of a victim, they can only feed on humanoid life and once they have fed have amazing regenerative and healing capabilities which make them very hard to kill. They are biologically immortal, so long as they feed, and so will never die of natural causes. They are also capable of hibernating for centuries at a time to allow their Human flock to grow before they awaken and cull it back down. Any space faring races that are discovered are immediately wiped out. Their technology is based on their biology and is not as advanced as ours is, but they are highly intelligent. They swept through space culling and destroying any advanced technology in their path. The Alterans held off for a century, but with their cloning technology the Wraith had overwhelming numerical superiority. Eventually the only outpost remaining was again Atlantis. The decision was made to abandon the city and leave the humans we had seeded in that galaxy to their fate at the feeding hands of the Wraith. Atlantis was sunk to the bottom of an ocean and they left through the Astria Porta to Earth, where they hoped to find human life. Most of them ascended, a few of them married and had children. Some of them married into local villages and tribes.

"Something else you must understand about our people is that as we approached the point where we could ascend we developed abilities. Telekinesis, telepathy, healing by touch, they were all quite common among our people those days. We understood where the ability came from, and how our brainwave patterns interacted with the fabric of the universe to achieve a certain effect, but within two generations we had forgotten our history and our technology. What do you think what essentially amounted to human hybrids with advanced biology and powers beyond their comprehension called their new ability?"

Daniel answered

"Well, they probably would've thought it was magic."

"Correct Daniel. They called themselves Witches and Wizards and from that point until six years ago you lived with them side-by-side on this planet."

"What a minute. I remember something now, something in the news six years ago. There was a world-wide influx of two hundred thousand people with no paper trail that suddenly appeared on the streets all over the place. We thought it was an invasion. Some of them were talking about having lost their magic. Was that them?"

"Yes, Daniel. That was them. We are coming up on recent history. Well more recent anyways. After the Salem Witch trials in the 1600's the Wizarding World hid themselves from the Muggle World. There are quite a few enchantments that alter the perception of people who cannot manipulate potentiae themselves."

"So you're saying that there were witches that were burned in Salem?" Dr. Weir asked.

"For the most part, no, Dr. Weir." This time the answer came from Hermione. "There was a lot of fear at that time, and more young women were killed than witches captured. Our society stayed in hiding from that point on, and began to stagnate. That stagnation came to a head in Britain in the 1970's with the rise of a Dark Wizard named Tom Riddle. He called himself Lord Voldemort."

"The Lord who Flees from Death? A little melodramatic don't you think? And this is after nearly a decade of fighting the Gua'uld…" at the blank looks he was receiving Jack realized he had just given away that he spoke French. "What? Daniel is the only one who can ever learn a foreign language? Please."

This made most of the SGC vets chuckled and Harry picked up the narrative at this point.

"Yes. Well, he was quite dramatic. He was a half-blood, that is when one parent is magical and one is not, and an orphan. Growing up an orphan in 1940's England wasn't fun for anyone involved and it shaped him. He changed his name to hide his non-magical heritage and began to draw in followers from the pureblooded section of our society; he called them Death Eaters. They were wizards who were born from wizards and could trace their heritage back at least ten magical generations. They thought that the only people who were worthy of wielding magic was them, and any of the 'un-pure' must be cleansed."

Everyone on the SGC side of the table cringed. An ethnic cleansing attempted by people who could wield the powers of the nearly ascended right here on Earth was probably the most disturbing thing they had heard thus far. That is saying quite a lot considering, hello, SPACE VAMPIRES.

"The year before Harry was born a Seer gave a prophecy about the fall of the Dark Lord." Neville picked up the narrative, "The war was not going well at all at the time. Voldemort and his Death Eaters would appear with overwhelming force, kill and destroy as many and as much as they could and then flee before they could be captured. The prophecy spoke of a child who would be born that would defeat Voldemort. Now from the expression on your faces you put about as much stock in prophecies as we do, but the important point is that the first part of the prophecy was overheard by a Death Eater and brought to their Lord."

Rodney McKay could keep silent no longer and as soon as Neville stopped to take a breath he interrupted.

"I'm sorry," he said, not being sorry at all, "I'll buy advanced humans thinking their abilities are 'magic', but you don't actually expect us to believe in prophecy do you? It's impossible to tell the future. A race as advanced as yours should know this. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle precludes the possibility of forecasting the future."

"Well… I am not familiar with Earth physicists, but I believe you speak of the trade-off between knowing with specificity where a particle is and where it is going? Yes I can see how you could apply that to prophecy. So would you allow that it is possible to see A future but perhaps not THE future?"

"Well, yes I suppose that, given a large enough set of data, seeing a possible future wouldn't violate the laws of physics as we know them."

"Well, your physics has a long way to go to catch up with ours, but if you recall I said that the important point was that the prophecy was overheard by an agent of Voldemort. You are quite correct that had the prophecy gone unheard it would never have come to pass. By telling Voldemort that there was a child out there who would grow up and be able to oppose him, however, a series of events was started that led to the prophecy being fulfilled. Prophecies exist outside of time. There isn't a prophecy that will be fulfilled, or has been fulfilled, they just are. They are simply truths that affect that universe if they are allowed to, or simply fade away. But Prophecy is often heard by exactly who needs to hear it. What else would be the point?"

Harry took up the story again at this point, since it was about to start centering on his own life.

"There were two children that fit the first few descriptions of the prophecy. The first part went like this… The one with the Power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… Both Neville's and my own family fit this description. On Halloween 1981 Voldemort attacked my family. My father fought him while my mother ran to my room to gather me up before running. He made it through my father and told my mother to move away from my cot and she could go free. He only wanted to kill me because I might grow up to oppose him, but my mother refused to move so he killed her too. The willful act of sacrifice on her part was enough to protect me from his attack when he attempted to kill me, and it gave me this scar." He lifted his fringe and showed them the lightning bolt shape that had been carved into his forehead so many years ago.

"The spell he used against me rebounded against him and ripped his soul out of his body. For the next thirteen years he was neither dead nor alive. He was conscious but had no body.

"If he had heard the whole of the prophecy he probably wouldn't have acted on it. The rest is… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches."

Harry continued his tale. He glossed over his years at the Dursley's and the first few years of Hogwarts. He told them about the tri-wizard tournament and the resurrection of Voldemort. He talked about Horcruxes and the second war. He told them about Merlin, or Moros, and the revelations his visit brought. He told them about being port-keyed to Antarctica for the first time and using the Control Chair as a learning tool and utilizing an Alteran scanner to both remove the Horcrux in his scar and to track down the rest of them.

He briefly mentioned the political fallout of his revelations about the origins of 'magic'.

"You have to understand that the majority of the magical population on Earth was stuck in the pre-industrial era. They didn't see the need to grow and expand as a people because they could do anything with magic. Who needs to build machines to plow fields when a few words and gestures does just as good a job? The older generations were not prepared to part with everything that they knew to try something new. Those who believed me, those who I trained in the Control Chair about Alteran science and mathematics were soon being cast in the same light as the Death Eaters had been the year before. We were different than the average wizard and that was enough of to vilify us and attempt to imprison us.

"There were 987 of us when the situation reached critical mass. The British Ministry of Magic had discovered the location of the outpost in Antarctica and were preparing a raid to destroy it and capture us. As you know that outpost is essential to the protection of this planet and its people and we couldn't allow them to continue. There was enough information there to calculate the gate address for Atlantis so the decision was made to abandon Earth. But we couldn't leave behind a rouge faction of Alterans who had no idea what their powers truly were or how to use them for more than their own self-benefit to destroy the outpost. There was also enough information in the database in the Control Chair for us to design and release a retrovirus in our wake that attached itself to and removed any fully fledged Alteran genome they came across. It removed the ability of these people to interact with the universe on a quantum level. That is where your large influx of homeless people came from. We've been in Atlantis ever since. Could you tell us more about yourselves now? This program was still in its infancy when we left, so we don't know much about you."

Brigadier General Hank Landry posed the obvious question.

"How is it that you know anything about us? This is a top secret installation."

"We picked up wormhole traffic while we were still living in the Antarctic outpost. We couldn't tell where those wormholes were going, but based on their scheduling we figured you were running some kind of permanent operation away from the eyes of the public," explained Neville. "We knew that the Astria Porta was here, under Cheyenne Mountain, because it's rather hard to hide the quantum signature of twenty thousand kilos of naquadah. That's about all we know about you."

General Landry was appeased for the moment that nothing too classified had been gleaned. Although if they were going to ally themselves with these New Alterans they would probably be giving them copies of most mission reports.

"We've learned about the galaxy that is now our home, but we never had the chance to get off world in this galaxy much. We know about the Gua'uld but only that they are a parasitic race that takes humans as hosts and rule most of the galaxy. Other than that we're rather ignorant to the state of Avalon at the moment," said Harry.

"You want us to update you on the current state of the whole galaxy? Do you have a couple of days?" As usual the sarcasm came from Jack.

"Perhaps it would be best if you gave us whatever information you can in a digital format that we can peruse later? Unless there is something pressing, besides the Ori, that you would like to tell us about?"

"Just a who's who of the major players? We can do that. The Gua'uld aren't much of a threat anymore. Most of them went into hiding after we kicked their asses and Anubis showed up on the scene. Anubis is locked in eternal battle with an Ascended, so I don't think he'll be much of a problem. The Aschen still worry me. Haven't heard from them in a few years, but they are a planet of sociopaths, literally, and are very patient if a future version of Sam is to be believed. They utilize bio-weaponry which is what makes me worry about them. The Lucian Alliance are a rather annoying and vicious group of pirates. The Free Jaffa Nation is our Ally, but they are suffering from an internal schism that is a result of the Ori. One of their council members was turned into a Prior, but many Jaffa do not want to start worshipping new false gods so soon after they got free of the Gua'uld. I think those are the highlights."

"So the Ori have already sent followers here to convert people in this galaxy? Do you know how many planets have been taken?" asked Harry.

"Rough estimates are that 35 planets have been visited by Priors. Of those at least ten took up Origin after witnessing the power the Priors can wield. The others have all been attacked with various levels of casualties from just a few dead to the entire population."

"The Atlantis database says that there are 1487 habitable worlds in this galaxy, not all of them on the gate network, but it does not have any census data. Based on wormhole traffic we estimate that 85% of the worlds with Astria Portae are inhabited. If the Ori manage to convert more than 50% of the population they will have to power necessary to contest the Ascended Collective here in this galaxy. After that they will wipe out the planets not in their control and start over," added Harry. Everyone was glad that they weren't close to that threshold, but everyday new planets were being converted or destroyed, and if the Ori kept to their current pace they would have the necessary percentage of followers in short order."

Their conversation turned slightly more casual as they all got to know each other better. Jack decided meeting aliens who were born and raised on Earth took care of much of the culture shock that would've impeded most First Contacts from reaching this state.

Sam finally got comfortable enough that they weren't shooting down her questions that she asked for demonstration of magic.

Her jaw nearly hit the floor when Harry waved his hand and what used to be the large conference table they were seated around turned into three very large lions. All of the SGC personnel were struck dumb at the sight. They have seen examples of telekinesis and telepathy before, but nothing that so fundamentally broke the laws of physics as they know them.

"B-but! How that f-fuck did you do that?!" squeaked Rodney from one end of what was now just an ellipse of chairs around three rather docile looking lions. John decided at that moment that McKay was cute, and then wanted to smack himself for thinking like such a pansy.

"What you must understand about us, Dr. McKay is that we are infused with a higher concentration of potentiae than most other beings. We can bend this, and the surrounding energy in the matter around us, to our will."

"You've used the term potentiae a few times now. What is that exactly?" asked Sam, since Rodney was still sputtering his disbelief and they had moved far beyond anyone else in the room.

"It is the energy that powers the device you used to dial Atlantis. The energy of nothingness, of the between spaces, of the universe itself. I do not know what you call it." Answered Luna. She had left her dreaminess back home on Atlantis and was in full Councilor of Science mode.

"Zero-point energy. You're saying you can directly manipulate zero-point energy?"

"Yes. Exactly that. A rather apt name. So whatever physical limits you have put on the transfiguration you've just witnessed based on energy requirements can be done away with. With such a potent power source it takes very little to accomplish something like this, especially if the effect is temporary which I hope Harry remembered to make it."

"Oh yes Luna, any moment now it'll-"he was cut off by the three lions shifting and molding back into the conference table that they used to be "-change back. There you go then."

"Good. The rest is down to focus of mind and strength of will. Harry had to have a pretty good idea of what the lions looked like and how they moved and acted before he could command his magic to make it so. The universe itself fills in the details. You needn't imagine every muscle fiber, blood vessel and nerve, merely an overview of the whole creature. Do you understand, Colonel Carter?"

"No. Not at all really, but I can see how it could be possible now. I think that's the best I can hope for right now." Sam responded, still completely flummoxed that these people could command the energy of the universe itself to do their bidding. What do the laws of physics matter if it's just a matter of commanding the universe to do something? Not a whole lot, she thought. Not a whole lot.

Harry decided after the fifth hour of their little conference was coming to a close that it was time to get the ball rolling. He had made his decision, and would allow the Terrans their expedition. For as much wisdom and knowledge they had gained just from exposure to Atlantis, they were all of them still rather young. The oldest among them was Bill Weasley who was almost 37 by Earth's calendar. They could do a lot with the council of people with the combined life experience these people had. They would need each other if they were to combat the Ori and the Wraith. He communicated his thoughts to his three friends and they all agreed they should take the expedition back with them.

"Well. I realize we put quite a damper in your plans, but we hope we can rectify this. We are willing to house your expedition for one year in exchange for the SGC database. Specifically the parts about the state of Avalon as a whole as well as the planets here. At the end of that year each expedition member will have a choice to make. They can either return to Earth or can become Terran colonists on Atlantis. No one will live more than one consecutive year on Atlantis without accepting Atlantean Citizenship. We will not ask that they give up their citizenships to Earth or its member nations, so long as those agree to their people holding dual-citizenship; and as long as they commit no crimes their status as Atlantean Citizens will give them free access to the Stargate so they may visit Earth as they wish. And yes, Colonel Sumner, that does include military personnel. Anyone who wishes to remain in service can join the Terran Armed Forces that will be housed in Atlantis to protect your colonists and see to the best interests of your planet."

AN:

Well that's Chapter 2. The next chapter will be the re-charging of a ZPM, some snark, some Harry/Neville background, and a trip to Atlantis. Sorry about the huge delay. I haven't been writing all that frequently and I want to keep a buffer of things that arent published so that any changes I make dont trickle back to things already posted. Thats the problem I ran into the first time around.