The Lazarus Curse IIb
THE LAZARUS CURSE
And Other Reasons Why the Good Can Never Die Young
PART IIb
Part I
Part IIa
PART IIb:
Carson wasn’t particularly surprised when Remus Lupin walked through his door. He hadn’t seen the display in the Gateroom, but he made a point of looking over the medical files of all new personnel before they arrived. And Carson knew only one person who would both claim to have lupus and list moonlight as an allergy. It was just like that lot to rely on an auto-answer-quill to fill out muggle forms instead of looking up real meanings.
“Remus,” he acknowledged carefully. At school he’d never gotten along with the Gryffindors - always rushing into things, running around leaving mayhem in their wake just because they thought it might be fun. John’s style of running things certainly hadn’t deviated (though the kind of trouble he got into with Rodney was certainly more intellectual curiosity and less mischief than it had been with Sirius Black).
Lupin didn’t look much different. His hair had grayed and he looked even more tired than he did back at the end of their last NEWT, but there was the same wary warmth in his eyes, the same reassuring half-smile.
“Carson. It’s good to see you.” Carson doubted it, but he smiled anyhow. Working all these years with muggles had certainly gotten him to work on his bedside manner. They hadn’t been friends, but at least Remus had never openly picked on the bookish little muggle-lover.
“It’s been a bloody long time, lad.”
Remus nodded. “I’ve always wondered about you. A lot of people came back after the war was over and I always expected to see your face smiling on the cover of the Daily Prophet. You know, Slughorn was always going on about how you were going to be the next Nicolas Flamel? He’s normally right about those things.”
Carson shrugged, nonplussed. Maybe a few years ago, before Atlantis, he might have been stung by Remus’ comment. Carson loved learning - potions, herbology, care of magical creatures, and he tolerated charms as a mediwitches’ necessity, but in the end, there was nothing that beat hands on experience. He’d never truly understood a healing spell until his freshman year anatomy class at a muggle med school, hands buried in a cadaver. There was just so much to the basics that magic had skipped over in the rush towards product.
So maybe his knowledge could have helped a few wizards. It probably would have helped in the war effort, but wizards, barring accidents that generally tended to be their own stupid fault, were a healthy lot. They lived long full lives. They conjured themselves a steak dinner if they were starving, a simple remedy if they had a cold. They just didn’t need his help the way muggles did.
“I came here,” Carson replied tiredly. It had been an easy choice.
Lupin nodded, looking around. The man probably couldn’t come close to understanding half of the things in this room, but that didn’t stop him from looking with a gleam of curious interest - a child visiting a museum for the first time, making up stories before the words tumbled out of the tour guide’s mouth.
“Why don’t yeh take a seat? Let me get a sample?” While he had him here, he might as well confirm what he already suspected - the correlation between the Ancient gene and wizardry. There were eight of them with the natural gene on Atlantis, plus Colonel O’Neill (from one of those crazy American non-practicing families). Only Carson and John were actual wizards, but they had the strongest expression of the gene. The others all possessed some element of the recessive in one or more of the group of loci that coded for the phenotypic expression of what they called ‘the gene.’ Maybe they were squibs, though there was no way to know without testing within the Wizarding world. If Lupin expressed ‘the gene’ as much as John did, it’d certainly confirm a few things.
Lupin sat, swinging his legs off the end of the bed like a child . . . or like Colonel Sheppard. Carson moved over to him, pulling his sleeve up (which received a curious look), tying the tourniquet and pulling out the needle.
“What are you doing with that?” Lupin asked with a half-crazed wild look in his eye.
Carson had forgotten - werewolves could be tetchy about anything involving blood.
“I’m just going to insert the needle into your arm, draw out a bit of blood. Everything’s sterile, we all wear gloves. It’s perfectly safe.”
Lupin still looked wary, but he allowed Carson to collect the sample, hopping off the bed the second he had it out and inserted into the Ancient analysis machine.
“So how are you?” he asked, almost by default. Professionalism was always something Carson had managed.
“Fine, thank you.”
“So the war’s over.”
“That it is.”
“What do ya plan on doing now?” Carson brought up the analysis on his computer, scrolling down the mass of numbers. Lupin looked over his shoulder, but didn’t seem particularly interested.
“The same as anyone, I suppose. Settle down, start a new life. I taught at Hogwarts for a time and rather enjoyed it. I got to know Madame Maxime in the war, perhaps Beaubaxton would take me.”
Carson raised an eyebrow. “Why not just go back to Hogwarts?”
Lupin sighed, “They’d never allow it. I don’t think you ever knew, but I’m a werewolf.”
Carson nodded. “John told me.”
“I guess he figured you’d never see me again. Someone leaked it - Severus, no doubt. Parents don’t want a werewolf in charge of their students.”
Carson shook his head. “Bloody shame.” Lupin had always been a smart boy and a natural teacher (how James and Sirius would have made it through History of Magic without him, Carson had no idea). “Even after all that’s happened, they still won’t let you?”
That was one thing Carson liked about the muggle world - yes, prejudice still existed in many parts, but there were places, at least, where blood mattered not at all. Even the most noble of wizards . . . Dumbledore, even, couldn’t see an idea for simply its worth, not where it came from.
“As long as I am what I am . . . no.”
“Fools,” Carson remarked, pulling up the analysis of Lupin’s ATA gene. From what he could tell, it was coded very similar to Sheppard’s, but they’d have to check the phenotypic expression anyhow. He smiled. “Well, I think you’ve just confirmed a pet theory of mine. The part of you that makes you a wizard is related to the people who built this place. Did you know that Morgan le Fay and Merlin walked these very halls?”
Carson wasn’t so in awe of it as John was, and neither so much so as Lupin, who’d always appreciated the history of magic (though even he sometimes fell asleep during Professor Bins’ lectures). “Amazing,” he looked around, awed by the gadgets and technology that he previously hadn’t been, seeming to examine Carson’s Earth-based microscope with fascination. Carson didn’t bother to tell him that Merlin hadn’t touched that, certainly not stroked it reverently that way.
“I’d like to do some testing, just to confirm, of course. The genes . . . erm . . . the parts of your blood that control . . . things . . . well, we can read them, but the meaningful part is actually the proteins that . . .”
Lupin had this deer in the headlights look that might have been funny if Carson hadn’t found it slightly pathetic - he still had trouble reconciling the power of wizards with their ignorance. “Never mind. The important thing is that you turn a few things on. I’ll see if I can get Rodney to . . .”
“Dr. McKay?”
Carson nodded.
“Is there anyone else?”
“Yes, I’m sure Radek would be willing.”
“It’s just that Dr. McKay doesn’t like me very much. He keeps glaring and saying something about the temperature in my room if I don’t ‘back off’ - of what, I’m not sure. I did have to use a warming charm yesterday, but . . .”
Carson sighed, rolling his eyes. It was just like Lupin to assume the best when possibly the most capable (and jealous) man on the base was threatening him. “Oh, that’s just Rodney. He’s jealous of all the time you’re spending with Colonel Sheppard. Probably thinks the two of you are involved and is plotting his revenge at this very moment.”
“So he and James are serious then?”
“Looks like. God help us all,” Carson mumbled, going back to his equipment. He’d see what he could do about this whole werewolf problem. It couldn’t be much different than Colonel Sheppard turning into a giant bug, now could it?
<<<>>>
Draco Malfoy held his head high. He didn’t run a nervous hand through his hair or look down at his black silk robes or examine himself in the mirror. He knew he looked impeccable, even if that was the only thing he did know.
The courtroom was down deep in the bowels of the Ministry, strategically placed at the end of a dark corridor, long and foreboding, high ceilings designed to make you shrink in the face of justice. Draco stood tall, walking proud (Malfoys were always proud), flanked by two Aurors whose names he hadn’t bothered to remember.
They didn’t scare him. And neither did the ministry. After the Dark Lord, reality seemed muted; just the smallest spark of anger in his great consciousness and all around him suffered. These Ministry dolts would trip over their own bureaucracy long before they reached even that point.
Draco waited for one of the Aurors to open the door for him, ignoring the flashing of wizarding cameras, the pinched accusatory faces of speculative onlookers, the hate in the eyes of all the righteously naïve bystanders whose only knowledge of the war was that it added a twinge of fear to their otherwise boring lives.
He gave the cameras his best attitude, sneered right back at the glaring faces and took his seat at the front of the room, not even flinching as the restraints wrapped easily around his wrists and ankles.
“Draco Malfoy,” a voice boomed down from the tall central podium before him, like a God passing down his commands from on high. Draco could just make out the grizzled old face of Rufus Scrimgeour staring down at him accusingly, a bellicose fire burning in his eyes as he shook his lion-like mane back from his face.
Draco stared placidly up at him. If he’d been a muggle, he might have questioned the mixture of the executive and the judiciary, but wizards, especially pure-blooded ones, could not be bothered by the governance of the multitudes.
“You are charged with treason, conspiracy to murder, violence against wizard-kind, muggle-baiting and torture, use of Unforgivable Curses, and unauthorized under-age sorcery.”
Draco almost laughed at the last one. So what? Were they going to charge their precious Potter too? And the weasel? And all the goody-two-shoes that had fought on the so-called side of light? Draco snorted. He doubted it. Draco was not fool enough to claim that his side had not done horrible things in the war, but at the very least, they were consistent.
The trial seemed to pass by quickly, almost beyond Draco’s interest. They would declare him guilty no matter what, that was for certain. McNair’d been sentenced to execution the day before, and Crabbe’s father the day before that. Draco’s own parents were already dead - his father killed in the final showdown and his mother by the Dark Lord, as punishment. There wasn’t a lot of hope for any of the old families. Why keep them around when the victors could divide up their ancient property as the spoils of war? There could not be victory without spoils.
“Do you deny that you tortured those muggles? You dropped one from the height of a Quidditch goalpost.”
“I don’t deny it,” Draco replied evenly, not even sure who it was that he was responding to. “But if I hadn’t, the Dark Lord would have killed my mother, my father.”
There were murmurs in the crowd. It sounded as though one woman said, “And we would have been glad to have been rid of him.”
Draco’s jaw clenched. He’d never been under the delusion that his father as a saint, but Draco’s world was lonely, empty now without him. But did that matter to these people? No, of course not. Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater; he couldn’t have been a very good father. His son should’ve been glad to be rid of him. Except he wasn’t. Harry Potter wasn’t the only orphan of this war - just because Draco’s father was an enemy didn’t mean it hurt any less.
“So you’re saying that you were coerced?” a small hawkish looking witch to the right enquired.
“Yes.” So Draco wasn’t an upstanding moral citizen, willing to sacrifice everything to fight against the bad things in this world. That didn’t mean that he should be killed - head chopped off with an axe by some contracted squib, unable to use the death to splinter his soul. Draco shook his head. The ministry claimed that a wizard’s life was worth no more than a muggle’s, but did a soul matter any less because its breaking could harm only a small few?
The witch nodded. “We may be willing to grant you leniency, considering your proximity to Riddle and your youth, but . . . the path to good must be a conscious choice, my boy. To fall unequivocally to terror without even the attempt to resist is just as dangerous as the will to power.”
Draco disagreed - what had all of those lame ministry pamphlets been then? And what about the arrests of those so far from Death Eaters that they probably couldn’t even recognize a snake if it curled around their big toe?
“Can you offer some instance in which you did not simply bend to Tom Riddle’s will?”
To not bend to the Dark Lord’s will when living day in and day out in his presence? This woman couldn’t even begin to understand . . . they were all just worker bees in a vast hive, their free will as much of a farce as this pathetic spectacle they were engaged in at this very moment. These people couldn’t possible understand the many flavors of fear - the stifling sparkling of the Dark Lord’s anger, the constant tingle of paranoia, the desperate race against failure.
Draco felt the mark burned black into the pale flesh of his arm twinge. Only those truly marked by darkness could fully understand.
“I slowed the process down when I could. I was quick to identify the mistakes of others - so he would discard possible servants. I surrendered when the time came.” Draco closed his eyes, trying not to remember that mudblood looking down at him over his Auntie Bella’s body, eyes flashing with challenge, daring him to move and let her finish him.
Rufus Scrimgeour, who had been pacing agitatedly but still not seeming to pay much attention before this, stopped at this, turning as he bellowed, “And how are any of these more than acts of cowardice? Slowing progress? By how much? Turning others in - just another way to climb the ladder. And surrendering . . . you call tossing your wand away to gain your life an act of good?”
Draco gulped. What more was there to say? The public wanted to never live in fear that any of the Death Eaters might follow in the path of their master. They wanted the darkness excised - as though there could ever be a world that acted independent of power. Whatever Draco said here - they would condemn him. He was just as doomed as his parents in the end. His bloodline had always been what defined him. Why, in death, should it be any different?
“He did act with courage,” a voice interrupted. Chairs creaked as people turned, punctuating the familiar voices’ statement with a gasp. Draco could not turn around, but he heard the whisper galloping wildly through the crowd.
“Harry Potter . . .” he murmured. ”To the bloody rescue.” His day just kept getting worse.
<<<>>>
Remus bounced on his heels, half sprawled out on James’ bed. Yes, he understood that his old friend had a life here, and apparently a boyfriend (not that this was particularly uncommon for wizards - no matter what strange rules the muggles had about it). But he didn’t belong here. He couldn’t exactly spend time making friends with the rest of the linguistics department - not when he didn’t understand what they were talking about half the time. If the history of wizardry had been half as bloody as the history of the ancient muggle world, nobody would’ve been surprised by Voldemort’s arrival on the scene.
But, regardless of what his colleagues might believe, Remus was learning a lot from these muggles. It was clear that these Ancients - who had built this city and written its history in the language of magic, had been a kind of proto-wizards. They were definitely connected by bloodline - that was positively the case (well, as far as Carson could tell with his blood sacrificing spells). And they had been just as obsessed with eternal life as the last of Salazar Slytherin’s heirs had been.
Remus shook the day’s discoveries from his head. He’d speak to James about the true origins of the Wraith at a later date - if James ever showed up, of course.
He pulled out his wand, “Tempus atlanti,” he flicked it laconically. It’d taken a while to figure out that he’d have to adjust the time spell for the different timekeeping system of this planet.
John had promised that he’d be back from the ‘lab’ with Rodney about an hour and a half ago. He briefly considered using the strange muggle communications device (an interesting alternative to the Floo network, he supposed, though a lot smaller than a fireplace). But, then again, did he really want to interrupt if they weren’t really in ‘the lab?’
Remus chuckled. He’d forgotten how James got when he was smitten. With a shake of his head, he stood, walking past the muggle artwork to the table next to James’ bed and the strange curved black wand sitting there. He’d seen Major Lorne point one into the Stargate the other day, heard the loud crack that usually signified a spell gone wrong. He ran his finger along the side of it, feeling slick metal, hard where a wand was soft and pliable and organic.
There was something powerful there, though, and it had Remus so entranced that he didn’t even hear the door swish open and James enter.
“Don’t touch that!” James shouted, reaching out and snatching the loud black wand away. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s loud,” Remus affirmed.
James sighed, pulling out the smaller wand and pointing it a one of the potted plants in the corner - a boom like an exploding Snap sounded and then the pot shattered.
“Reparo,” Remus remarked idly, turning away before he could see the pot repair itself. The wand wasn’t so great - a Reducto charm could be just as effective.
James sighed, walking over to the pot and pulling out a small roundish fragment of metal. He dropped it into Remus’ hand.
“This broke that?” Remus asked, incredulous.
“At high speeds this thing can break you too - tear through flesh like it was a Christmas pudding.”
Remus shrugged. “You could probably deflect it with a shield charm.”
“A shield charm will stop the Unforgivables too. The difference is that with this,” James held up the small black wand, “you just have to press a button. You can do Avada Kedavra and not even mean it.”
Remus gulped. He’d never thought much of muggles and their funny little wars - as though territory and that shiny black potion they pulled out of the ground really meant that much. He’d never thought . . . well, he’d never taken them that seriously, not when they walked about without ever knowing that there was this great evil out there, wanting to kill them just for the blood that ran in their veins - and more than able to do it, too.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim carved wooden box. It was one of Ollivander’s (though the man himself had disappeared with the war, Dumbledore had left it in a secret compartment in his office, saved just for James).
“Ebony and dragon’s heartstring. Picked specially for you.”
<<<>>>
Rodney found them on the firing range. He’d had to resort to the city’s sensors (and the way he’d programmed them to follow the subcutaneous transmitters of each expedition member). On an ordinary day, it’d be one of the first places he’d check, but with John’s shoulder wound still in the healing phase, he’d catch hell from Carson being anywhere near it.
But there he was, slouched back against the wall, eyes smoldering behind a pair of safety goggles. Pinloop was the one firing the gun, one arm steady before him. He hit the target every single time.
Rodney gaped. The man looked like he might be blown over by a loud recoil, but there he was, firing a gun with an intensity that reminded him far too much of John.
When the target had been sufficiently obliterated, he lowered the gun, pulling off the glasses and tucking them into his pocket.
“You’re a natural,” John said, nonplussed.
“Not that different than a wand,” Pinloop replied, equally unenthusiastic.
Wand? Was that like the British word for flashlight? Rodney’d have to ask Carson sometime.
It was about then that Pinloop turned and noticed him, reaching for his pocket. John moved on him then, griping his arm and whispering something that sounded like, ‘oblivion.’ Rodney gritted his teeth, noticing how close they stood together, how John, who cringed whenever anyone except Rodney tried to touch him, was voluntarily co-inhabiting another person’s space.
“Dr. Pinloop, that’s um . . . you’re a good shot, I see.” He was a lot better shot than Rodney, that was for sure. But in all fairness, Rodney had always had a mild case of astigmatism - made shooting hard.
“It’s Lupin,” the man corrected with a smile, completely unfazed. “But you can call me Remus, if you’d prefer.”
Rodney narrowed his eyes. He’d just finished reading over Pinloop’s personal file - what there was of it. Yes, he’d transferred to USC from Oxford where he studied linguistics and ethnomusicology (which would have been wonderful if Oxford had an ethnomusicology degree in the 1980s). He’d grown up in some city Rodney didn’t know existed. He’d gone to some private boarding school that Rodney had never heard of. And he now taught at some little liberal arts college that Rodney didn’t care about (liberal arts was a waste of oxygen in his honest opinion . . . and paper too). But the strange part was that Rodney didn’t know a single University (liberal arts and conservative conservatories, even) that would hire a professor who’d never published. It was just absurd.
He squinted. Considering the man’s supposed origins (and how in the hell did one learn Latin, Sanskrit, Mandarin, and Phoenician in Liverpool anyhow? He had to be something else . . . John’s secret ex-husband? Part of the strange society of secret handshakes and fuzzy hair that John and Carson seemed to be constantly engaging in? Whatever it was, it wasn’t academia.
“Well, Regis, the point is . . .”
“Remus.”
“The point is that Cadman’s team just uncovered a possible ZPM storage site, and with Corrigan down with the flu and Parker’s team out on some crazy hunt for the answer to life, the universe and everything, and all the ‘cultural’ people completely useless in technical language, we were thinking to recruit one of the newbies. Carson says you have the gene. And since you’re such an excellent shot . . .”
“He’s not going,” John interrupted, in his ‘because I say so’ voice.
Rodney glared. “He signed up for fieldwork in another galaxy, Sheppard, and he’s like Terminator with the terrified paper target. He’ll be fine.”
“But . . .” Sheppard began, only to have Regis silence him with a look. “Fine,” he gritted out, glaring at both of them in equal measure.
At the briefing two days later, Rodney was not at all surprised to learn that he, Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla would be replacing Lorne’s team as Dr. Pinloop’s escort. It figured.
<<<>>>
Ronon did not like Dr. Lupin. Aside from the fact that he kept whispering to Sheppard about Ronon being half of a ‘giant,’ there was something about him. His movements were graceful in walking - long and loping like an animal’s, but he had the scent of too many books - like McKay, but not afraid enough. He wandered around like a few of the newer Marines who seemed to have come to this galaxy thinking that they could tame it, which was something that not even the Ancestors had managed.
Ronon grumbled, taking a seat next to McKay on a particularly comfortable-looking boulder outside of the ruins. It was a nice day, though that was no reason to let his guard down. Still, Ronon had noticed McKay’s hostility, tension following him around like the stink of a warblat hog. Ronon wasn’t big on team dynamics, but if he didn’t pacify McKay soon, the hike back to the jumper would be a very long one.
“You’re tense,” he said, staring out into the bushes.
“Of course I’m tense. Did you see the size of those mosquitoes back there? I’m probably already being infected by Pegasus malaria as we speak.”
Ronon took a whiff of chemical-tainted air, wrinkling his nose. “You used enough of your bug repeller.”
“It’s not 100% foolproof,” McKay sulked, one hand holding a powerbar, the other his data slab. “Not that you’d care. Mosquitoes only bite those with an IQ over ninety. I’m sure you’re perfectly safe.”
Ronon snorted. He was used to McKay insulting his intelligence, just not with the same distracted stress in his voice. “You’re mad.”
“I’m not.”
“Did Sheppard have sex with Dr. Lupin?”
“What?” McKay rounded on him, almost dropping the data slab and getting chocolate on his lip, gaping at Ronon like that.
Ronon shrugged. “Sheppard likes him. You don’t. Like that Chaya woman.”
“You weren’t even here then!”
“People talk.”
“And if Sheppard was sleeping with him, why would I care? He’s a grown man. He can sleep with whoever he wants.”
Ronon wasn’t exactly sure how the Earthers liked to respond to obvious lies, but he’d recently watched a box-picture with Lieutenant Cadman about a blonde girl with a lot of clothes, so he said, “Duh.”
McKay collapsed back against the rock. “You have no idea how much I hate you.”
Ronon could never tell if McKay meant this as an insult or a declaration of love, so he shrugged. “Sheppard wouldn’t betray you, McKay. You can relax.”
McKay looked over his shoulder longingly, where Sheppard and Lupin were discussing a large stone tablet, laughing even as they traced the symbols carved into the rock. “This is why I do the thinking and you do the shooting.”
And with that, he stood, walking over and into the conversation about something called ‘Ancient Runes.’
Ronon stood, stalking around the perimeter. There wasn’t a lot to do on missions like these, which was why Sheppard’s team rarely did them. But Sheppard had insisted that they go on this one. Dr. Lupin had trained with him back on Earth and Sheppard was very protective. That was fine. Only next time, Ronon was not coming along.
The ruins weren’t very big, so it wasn’t long before he ran into Teyla, also patrolling.
“Ronon,” she said, eyes flickering to meet his, before returning to her surroundings. “Are they making progress?”
“Slowly,” Ronon grumbled. “They were arguing about ‘numerology.’”
Teyla looked as perplexed as he was.
“McKay thinks it’s voodoo. Sheppard disagrees.”
“So it will be some time before they finish.”
“McKay thinks Sheppard is having sex with Dr. Lupin.”
“So it will be a great deal of time before they finish.” Teyla sighed. “Rodney must learn that John may have friends outside of the team, even if all of us do not like him.” She gave Ronon a pointed, scolding look.
“There’s something strange about him.”
He expected a lecture about tolerating the Earthling’s strange habits or supporting Sheppard when McKay got pissy around him, but instead Teyla sighed. “I agree. But he is John’s friend and we must respect that.”
Ronon nodded and turned to make his way back into camp. It was odd, though, that in all their time speaking of a many of Earth’s customs, McKay’s past as the ‘king geek’ and the history of Teyla’s people, and Ronon’s own training on Sateda, they never spoke about Sheppard’s friends, the place he called home, his parents. Perhaps it was the fact that Earth was so different from Ronon’s world, but this man, Dr. Lupin, just didn’t seem how Ronon would’ve pictured it. He didn’t even like football.
Ronon was just entering hearing range of the end of one of McKay’s long rants about why a set of energy numbers did not mean that the Wraith only possessed partial souls (Ronon was unaware that physics had anything to do with souls, but what did he know?). He looked over towards the pillars where he wasn’t sure he’d seen any numbers, when he saw it - a flash of movement just outside his vision.
His weapon was raised in a second, heart pounding even as he took calm steady breaths. Whatever it was had chosen a good hiding place, nestled between a set of boulders. Ronon advanced with quiet deliberate steps, hearing Sheppard shush McKay off to his side.
Ronon approached the rock, hearing Sheppard whisper to Teyla over the radio. The thing was dark, almost a shadow, but with a strange boney membrane stretched between its limbs like a carel rodent.
“Don’t move,” Ronon commanded. And it didn’t. It just stared at Ronon with piercing red eyes, mesmerizing him until he heard McKay shriek behind him.
His weapon was set to stun, so Ronon felt no remorse in taking the shot, even if the creature had not budged. Ronon whirled around to see more creatures standing in a on outcropping above the entrance to the ruins. They shrieked right back, perfectly mimicking the timber of McKay’s shout.
Sheppard had his weapon firing, one of them already shot down next to where McKay was sprawled out on his back, moaning and clasping a gash on his arm. Ronon didn’t hesitate to rush forward, firing all the way, listening to Teyla over his shoulder providing suppressive fire at the creatures Ronon could hear crunching through the trees.
Dr. Lupin, too, was firing, looking confused when his handgun ran out of ammunition. Ronon picked up McKay’s fallen pistol and tossed it to him, as the man was down for the count, moaning and writhing on the ground.
Like those ‘clowns’ that Sheppard always talked about, the black things just kept coming, forcing the group into a tight defensive huddle over McKay’s fallen body.
When all four handguns had run out of ammunition, Dr. Lupin turned his attention to the lifesigns device. Ronon didn’t stop to note that he also had the touch of the Ancestors, only that he gasped when he looked at the display.
“James!” he shouted. “There’s no way we can hold them. Let me . . .”
“No!” Sheppard shouted. “I’m going for the jumper. Stay here and lay cover fire!”
Ronon didn’t need to be told twice. He spun around, taking out a few more shadowy figures as Sheppard forced himself down away from the mouth of the ruins and in the opposite direction of the jumper. There was no way he could have made it through the seeming wall of darkness above them.
It wasn’t long after Sheppard left that Ronon heard the stutter of one of the Earth weapons jamming up. He looked up at Teyla, just a second before a mass of dark things broke the ranks, swarming around Teyla, lifting her up above their heads, kicking and screaming all the way.
“Teyla!” Ronon shouted, even as he fired madly into the crowd, holding off the rest as they carried her away. They were being slowly surrounded, but the creatures now seemed focused on taking Teyla, their reasons unclear.
“I can hold them off,” Lupin shouted, voice much more steady that McKay’s would have been in the situation. “Go after her!”
Lupin didn’t have a weapon, and Ronon still didn’t like him, but there was an intensity to his voice, a command that seemed to almost echo in Ronon’s head, filling him with confidence, the desire to please. He trusted Lupin. He would do whatever he said.
And with that, he took off running into the forest, up in the direction that they’d taken Teyla.
Ronon kept firing, gunning them down, one by one. He had no idea what Lupin was doing back at the ruins, but it was working, because no more of the creatures seemed to be appearing. He had to be careful not to hit Teyla, who was now writing and moaning just as McKay had been. But in these conditions, Ronon was a sure shot. They had no weapons to fire back at him, and they’d taken his friend. It wasn’t long before he was running up to Teyla, trying to calm her frantic shouts, soothe her enough to carry her back to the others.
It was then that he saw it, another flash of motion, but this time from another animal - all rich brown fur where the other creatures had been black. It was tall, much bigger than they had been, a crown of hooked branches resting upon its head and wise, familiar eyes.
It was limping, a bloody gash across one flank, a gash from falling against something sharp, Ronon would guess.
The creature stared at him for one long moment before dashing off into the forest, injured limb hardly limiting its long easy bounds.
Ronon took a moment to be mesmerized before lifting Teyla onto his shoulder and running back towards the ruins.
Later, Ronon didn’t connect the creature in the forest with Sheppard’s slight limp or the box-picture the Marines later showed him with the guys who fought in the war in the jungle and mined some black mineral and shot animals for fun.
He was too busy worrying about his two teammates laid up in the hospital and later with how Lupin had managed to incapacitate a whole field of strange black creatures without a single weapon.
<<<>>>
Ronon wasn’t particularly a hard man to find. Remus asked a few of the passing Marines, and a cute blonde woman named Laura pointed him in the direction of the training room. She made him miss Tonks. “Just follow the sounds of manly grunting and bones being crushed and that’s where he’ll be,” she remarked casually.
Sure enough, there were suspiciously bone-crunching sounds coming from one of the rooms that the expedition had set aside as a gym. Remus approached warily, surprised as usual when the doors opened for him automatically - there were many self-opening doors in Hogwarts, but most of them were a lot more . . . finicky.
Remus entered just in time to see a young man wearing the green spotted outfit worn by the military go flying across the room. He winched when the poor man landed with a crunch.
Ronon grinned and Remus tried not to shudder. There was something about that man, as friendly as he might be. There was a certain feral quality to him: a wildness in his eyes that spoke to a familiar pull deep in Remus’ chest. He tried not to think about it.
“Lupin,” the man said.
“Mr. Dex,” Remus acknowledged. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
The man grunted, picking up a towel and wiping a small sheen of sweat of his brow. In the corner, the marine struggled to his feet and said, “You’re not interrupting anything, Sir. In fact, I was just . . .” he pointed the door and scurried away, hunched over one shoulder.
“Are you all right?” Remus asked with concern. The half-giant didn’t seem to be paying much attention.
“I’m good,” the soldier said with a wince.
“Next week, Waterman?” Ronon’s tone did not allow for argument.
“Yes, Sir.”
When the man was out of sight, Ronon pointed. “Sheppard likes me to keep an eye on the lazy ones.”
Strange, since as far as Remus could remember, James was one of the lazy ones. He’d never had to work at anything a day in his life (well, except maybe History of Magic, but only because he spent most of it passing notes with Sirius or mooning over Lily).
Catching Remus’ look, Ronon smirked. “I train with Sheppard four times a week.”
Remus wanted to be friendly and conspiratorial, he really did, but he’d rather just get this over with. He’d already done Dr. McKay back on the planet, now only Ronon remained. “I wanted to show you something.”
Remus reached into his pocket, faster going for his wand than Ronon had been going for one of the knives James said the man kept in his hair.
“Obliviate!” he yelled, careful to target the particular memory, the fact that Remus had been alone with no weapons, the hunt into the forest where James had said they’d seen each other, this most recent conversation.
He sighed, spinning on his heels and heading for the door.
Only to have James walk straight into him on his way in. Just his luck.
“Moony? What are you doing here?”
Remus didn’t really have time to be flushed or embarrassed or make excuses. James was a smart man. He took one look at Remus and the unconscious figure on the floor behind him before his jaw tightened in anger and he cast a quick spell of “Muffliato!”
“You didn’t,” he growled, stalking past Remus to help his friend into a more comfortable position, sprawled unconscious as he was on the floor.
“He saw you, James. He knew I didn’t have a weapon to fight off all those wood sprites! What was I supposed to do?”
James had the big man resting against the wall, his jacket beneath the man’s head. “You were supposed to let me handle it. He’s an alien. He doesn’t even know what a deer is. And we could have come up for an explanation for the other thing - you’ve got the gene. It could’ve been something in the ruins. You didn’t have to . . .” he gestured to guy slumped next to him.
But he did. Sure, Remus didn’t like having to obliviate muggles. They were people, not toys to be played around with as wizards pleased. But secrecy was something their society held dear and when there wasn’t any other option, yes he did believe in it. There were just some things you couldn’t let slip. But there was still that reckless streak in James - the one that thought that the rules stopped applying when he wanted them to.
Remus took in a deep breath. “When performed correctly obliviation is a perfectly harmless technique. It’s ministry standard . . .”
“The ministry isn’t here. And you of all people should know that just because they approve something, it isn’t necessarily right. Here, it isn’t . . . look, how would you feel if someone could just take away your memories - even the bad ones?”
Remus sighed. There had been attempts after the war - mediwitches in back-allys offering precision obliviation. Remus remembered the taste of blood on his lips, gritty and metallic, powerful too. He shook his head, trying to dispel it. He’d never even considered getting rid of those memories, no matter how terrible. “I’m sorry.”
James sighed, rising. “I know.” He patted Remus’ shoulder. “It’s a different world out here. I’m . . .” he looked down at his hands. James had always been all bluster, all charm, horrible at discussing his feelings. “I’m different.”
Remus nodded. They’d all changed. He had Tonks; James had his new very-annoying muggle lover; Harry was growing up, far too wise for his years. But that didn’t mean that he loved James any less. It didn’t . . . it couldn’t mute all the time they’d spent together, the instant connection of just knowing someone, no matter how much they’d changed.
“Come back,” Remus implored.
“There’s nothing for me there,” James said quietly. He gestured to the city around them, all metal and sleek mechanical curves where James’ world should be stone and mortar and tradition, breathing with magic. “We’re at war.”
“And peace somehow makes our world less valid? You’re a wizard, James. You can’t deny that. Weren’t you the one who was always telling me that?”
“Some people do.”
“I’m not talking about a half-blood who never really wanted to be a wizard in the first place! Or some crazy American non-practitioners! I’m talking about someone who was born a wizard, married a witch, fought in our war, gave his life for it!”
“I gave my life to protect Harry!” James shouted, face red and angry.
“And he needs you to do more than that!” It was rare that Remus really yelled, but James just didn’t understand. His own parents had been distant at best - Gryffindors but proud of their heritage, not much different than Sirius’ family before the war. And he’d barely had the chance to get to know Harry before he died. Even if James Potter knew more of sacrifice than he did of a father’s real job, there was no question that if ever Harry needed someone, it was now.
“He’s lived without me this long, Remus. It’s one thing to grow up an orphan and another to know that your father left you to fight the most evil being of our time all by yourself!”
“You yourself told me that you didn’t have a choice. Harry’s a smart boy. He’ll understand that.” Remus wanted to talk about Harry’s capacity for forgiveness, his ability to still love after all that was taken from him: the fact that he’d not just survived, but strived with a moral compass as strong as his parents’. But he couldn’t say those things to James, not when he’d gotten to know Harry and James hadn’t.
James calmed from his anger, the sense of magic in the air slowly fading. “I would have given anything to be there for him, Remus, but I’m not the same man anymore. I’m a muggle now.”
“And that’s so different? Harry won’t care. You’re his father.”
“I’m different in other ways too,” James whispered.
“Is this about Dr. McKay?” Remus asked, tentatively. Only James would be able to summon guilt over cheating after his wife had been dead for 17 years. “Because I doubt Harry would expect you to be celibate.”
“That’s not it, Remus . . . it’s just that I died. I’m not sure I should go back.”
Remus nodded. There had been magical charms - James’ will had gone into effect nearly immediately, his wand shattered. Even though they’d never found a body (as happened from time to time), he had been dead. There was no telling what kind of backfire there might be if he somehow negated that status.
And there was still the matter that the only other wizard ever to return from a similar state was Lord Voldemort, and the last thing the Wizarding world needed right now was proof that Tom Riddle’s quest for eternal life might not have been in vain. James would be faced with all sorts of accusations, scandal even, thrusting him into a limelight that he’d always been able to deftly avoid where his son could not.
But then, there was Harry. Remus hated to use it, but he reached out, clasping James’ arm, “I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t important. Harry hasn’t been the same since the final confrontation. Nobody can get through to him and . . .”
James’ hazel eyes flashed with a sudden sting of pain, looking over Remus as though he might find the answer painted there. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Remus didn’t tell him that he hoped that he might stay. Best friends and fathers didn’t grow on trees, after all. The expedition would find another muggle to replace him.
<<<>>>
Rodney ignored Caldwell’s raised eyebrow as he stalked off down the corridor, duffel-bag in hand. The rest of the crew knew not to question him - not in this rusty bucket of bolts. He was surprised that hiccupping woman could manage to find her ass with both hands, let alone the wherewithal to actually keep this thing spaceworthy.
“Dr. McKay?” Caldwell asked, mouth in that grim line that indicated the bug up his ass was lodging a protest against the disruption of his precious routine (the only way you got to be essentially a grocery delivery man with an intergalactic space ship was by being the most anal apple in the barrel, Rodney had decided).
“What? I’m not allowed personal leave? I’ll have you know that with the work I do for the SGC, Earth, and the universe at large I should . . .”
“Be crowned king of all existence?” Caldwell sneered. Rodney hated that man. “I have no problem with you taking personal leave, but in order for my crew to make preparations we have to be notified in advance.”
Rodney snorted. “Please, I checked with Hermiod: the oxygen scrubbers are only operating to 35% capacity, the mess is well-stocked, and you don’t have to worry about quarters, because I’ll be sharing with Colonel Sheppard.”
“Dr. McKay, I don’t want to ask but . . .”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Then don’t. I’ve shared a tent with him offworld. I can deal with his snoring. Besides, the number of times I’ve saved him and that ridiculous head of hair, he owes me.”
Caldwell looked suspicious. Or constipated. But then again, Caldwell always looked constipated. Maybe he’d been eating those Asgard protein cubes. “I’ll just check this with Dr. Weir,” he grumbled, as though that was any sort of threat. Rodney’d dealt with Elizabeth by saying, ‘I’m going to Earth for a few weeks. Zelenka’s in charge. If you say anything, I’ll write what I really think about everyone in my next round of performance reviews.’ Elizabeth hadn’t even paused before saying, ‘I’m glad you’re taking some time to spend with your family, Rodney.’
Rodney nodded to Caldwell and strode off down the corridor, overriding the lock on Sheppard’s door with barely a thought. Maybe he’d catch them in there . . . doing unspeakable things to each other, or whatever stiff-necked Brits did for fun. Maybe they played naked cribbage or read Victorian pornography or something.
Instead, he found John lounging in his bed, playing sudoku on his computer. It figured. When he looked up to meet Rodney’s eyes he seemed surprised if not flustered.
Rodney dumped his bag on the upper bunk, ignoring the way John was gaping at him. “Sorry about the last minute. Jeannie sent me a letter with the Daedalus. Madison has her first piano recital in a few weeks and I thought I’d . . . do the Uncle thing.” It was a complete and utter lie.
John smiled at him. “Are you sure you’re not just here to spy on me and Remus?”
“Um . . .” Rodney looked down at his shoes. “No?”
John sighed. “Do you really have Madison’s piano recital?”
Rodney shook his head. He was a terrible liar.
“Look, Rodney, I don’t want to be a bastard or anything, but I was sort of looking forward to seeing a couple of old friends with Remus. And . . .”
“And I’m not invited.”
John grabbed his hand, looking down at it as though it might bite him. John was good at a lot of things, but offering comfort wasn’t one of them. “It’s not that I don’t love you, I just . . .”
“You’re embarrassed by me?”
“No. I’m just not sure if now would be the time to introduce you to them. I haven’t seen any of them in close to seventeen years.”
Rodney nodded. It made sense, he supposed. Though he didn’t have to like it. “Fine. I did want to get a chance to visit Jeannie, visit with Colonel Carter a bit.”
John’s eyes narrowed. “Carter?”
Rodney harrumphed, but he was secretly glad that John was jealous of Sam. That meant he had the right to be jealous right back. “Please. I’m so over her. Though if she wanted to join us in some sort of . . . well, that would be seriously hot. But I have a hot colonel of my own now and I don’t . . .”
John leaned over and kissed him. “I’m glad. Will you stop stalking Remus now? He’s getting a little jumpy.”
Rodney bit his lip. On Earth he’d have access to all sorts of background checks . . .
John rolled his eyes. “All right, go ahead and ask. You’re practically exploding with it.”
“You and he . . . you were never . . .”
“No,” John whispered, kissing Rodney lightly, just below his ear. “And if we had, it wouldn’t matter.” He boxed the ear he’d just kissed. If he wasn’t lying on a very narrow bed with a ridiculously hot colonel, Rodney might worry about John’s ability to be sweet one minute and violent the next. “When will you get it through your head that I’m with you, even if I sometimes wonder why? You know most people would react to this kind of behavior by getting a restraining order?”
Rodney pulled John in tighter, trying not to hug him too possessively. “You’re not most people.”
“So I’ve been told,” John moaned into Rodney’s mouth, his hands roaming down Rodney’s sides to lift up his t-shirt.
“Where are you going?”
“England. I’ll only be gone for a couple of weeks,” John kissed the words into Rodney’s jawline.
“Weeks? What could you possibly find to do in England for weeks?”
John shrugged, yanking at Rodney’s belt. As pleasant as it was, Rodney could spot a diversionary tactic a mile a way (he’d had practice with John Sheppard).
“John?”
“Look, I have some business to wrap up, okay? It’s just some stuff I have to take care of and I’m all yours. I promise,” John murmured, pawing at Rodney’s pants before giving up and just sticking his hand into the slit of Rodney’s boxers. “Are you done asking questions or can we fool around now?”
Actually, Rodney did have a rather pressing question. “Do you have any idea why Hermiod is wearing a hat? And what the hell is S.P.E.W?”
John just shrugged, giving Rodney one of his theatrically wet smacking kisses. “Maybe his head’s cold.”
<<<>>>
The night was clear and joyless out in the marshes, stars flickering feebly in a velvety darkness, as cloying and thick with moisture as if the clouds had already come in off the channel.
Far off in the distance a single light flickered, a haunting melody spilling forth, a lullaby to a sleeping child rocking by the warmth of an old-fashioned fire.
Not much is known of the marsh people - half spirits, fairies, wild elves, they would say, haunting muggles with their ghostly light or whispering quiet poetry that sucked the tide in.
But the most important thing to remember about the marsh people was that, where they lived, in their exquisite magical poverty deep in the bog, what they did, what they ate, their dreams, their hopes, their ambitions . . . none of it mattered, because nobody outside cared. There was a saying among wizards - if an elf falls in the forest, does he make a sound?
That’s why nobody noticed when the light in the heart of the swamp slowly flickered out, the sullen wails of the colicky child by the fire suddenly quieted, and a snake slithered silently back into its nest of vipers down in that foggy hollow, leaving behind it nothing but a kiss.
Part IIIa
And Other Reasons Why the Good Can Never Die Young
PART IIb
Part I
Part IIa
PART IIb:
Carson wasn’t particularly surprised when Remus Lupin walked through his door. He hadn’t seen the display in the Gateroom, but he made a point of looking over the medical files of all new personnel before they arrived. And Carson knew only one person who would both claim to have lupus and list moonlight as an allergy. It was just like that lot to rely on an auto-answer-quill to fill out muggle forms instead of looking up real meanings.
“Remus,” he acknowledged carefully. At school he’d never gotten along with the Gryffindors - always rushing into things, running around leaving mayhem in their wake just because they thought it might be fun. John’s style of running things certainly hadn’t deviated (though the kind of trouble he got into with Rodney was certainly more intellectual curiosity and less mischief than it had been with Sirius Black).
Lupin didn’t look much different. His hair had grayed and he looked even more tired than he did back at the end of their last NEWT, but there was the same wary warmth in his eyes, the same reassuring half-smile.
“Carson. It’s good to see you.” Carson doubted it, but he smiled anyhow. Working all these years with muggles had certainly gotten him to work on his bedside manner. They hadn’t been friends, but at least Remus had never openly picked on the bookish little muggle-lover.
“It’s been a bloody long time, lad.”
Remus nodded. “I’ve always wondered about you. A lot of people came back after the war was over and I always expected to see your face smiling on the cover of the Daily Prophet. You know, Slughorn was always going on about how you were going to be the next Nicolas Flamel? He’s normally right about those things.”
Carson shrugged, nonplussed. Maybe a few years ago, before Atlantis, he might have been stung by Remus’ comment. Carson loved learning - potions, herbology, care of magical creatures, and he tolerated charms as a mediwitches’ necessity, but in the end, there was nothing that beat hands on experience. He’d never truly understood a healing spell until his freshman year anatomy class at a muggle med school, hands buried in a cadaver. There was just so much to the basics that magic had skipped over in the rush towards product.
So maybe his knowledge could have helped a few wizards. It probably would have helped in the war effort, but wizards, barring accidents that generally tended to be their own stupid fault, were a healthy lot. They lived long full lives. They conjured themselves a steak dinner if they were starving, a simple remedy if they had a cold. They just didn’t need his help the way muggles did.
“I came here,” Carson replied tiredly. It had been an easy choice.
Lupin nodded, looking around. The man probably couldn’t come close to understanding half of the things in this room, but that didn’t stop him from looking with a gleam of curious interest - a child visiting a museum for the first time, making up stories before the words tumbled out of the tour guide’s mouth.
“Why don’t yeh take a seat? Let me get a sample?” While he had him here, he might as well confirm what he already suspected - the correlation between the Ancient gene and wizardry. There were eight of them with the natural gene on Atlantis, plus Colonel O’Neill (from one of those crazy American non-practicing families). Only Carson and John were actual wizards, but they had the strongest expression of the gene. The others all possessed some element of the recessive in one or more of the group of loci that coded for the phenotypic expression of what they called ‘the gene.’ Maybe they were squibs, though there was no way to know without testing within the Wizarding world. If Lupin expressed ‘the gene’ as much as John did, it’d certainly confirm a few things.
Lupin sat, swinging his legs off the end of the bed like a child . . . or like Colonel Sheppard. Carson moved over to him, pulling his sleeve up (which received a curious look), tying the tourniquet and pulling out the needle.
“What are you doing with that?” Lupin asked with a half-crazed wild look in his eye.
Carson had forgotten - werewolves could be tetchy about anything involving blood.
“I’m just going to insert the needle into your arm, draw out a bit of blood. Everything’s sterile, we all wear gloves. It’s perfectly safe.”
Lupin still looked wary, but he allowed Carson to collect the sample, hopping off the bed the second he had it out and inserted into the Ancient analysis machine.
“So how are you?” he asked, almost by default. Professionalism was always something Carson had managed.
“Fine, thank you.”
“So the war’s over.”
“That it is.”
“What do ya plan on doing now?” Carson brought up the analysis on his computer, scrolling down the mass of numbers. Lupin looked over his shoulder, but didn’t seem particularly interested.
“The same as anyone, I suppose. Settle down, start a new life. I taught at Hogwarts for a time and rather enjoyed it. I got to know Madame Maxime in the war, perhaps Beaubaxton would take me.”
Carson raised an eyebrow. “Why not just go back to Hogwarts?”
Lupin sighed, “They’d never allow it. I don’t think you ever knew, but I’m a werewolf.”
Carson nodded. “John told me.”
“I guess he figured you’d never see me again. Someone leaked it - Severus, no doubt. Parents don’t want a werewolf in charge of their students.”
Carson shook his head. “Bloody shame.” Lupin had always been a smart boy and a natural teacher (how James and Sirius would have made it through History of Magic without him, Carson had no idea). “Even after all that’s happened, they still won’t let you?”
That was one thing Carson liked about the muggle world - yes, prejudice still existed in many parts, but there were places, at least, where blood mattered not at all. Even the most noble of wizards . . . Dumbledore, even, couldn’t see an idea for simply its worth, not where it came from.
“As long as I am what I am . . . no.”
“Fools,” Carson remarked, pulling up the analysis of Lupin’s ATA gene. From what he could tell, it was coded very similar to Sheppard’s, but they’d have to check the phenotypic expression anyhow. He smiled. “Well, I think you’ve just confirmed a pet theory of mine. The part of you that makes you a wizard is related to the people who built this place. Did you know that Morgan le Fay and Merlin walked these very halls?”
Carson wasn’t so in awe of it as John was, and neither so much so as Lupin, who’d always appreciated the history of magic (though even he sometimes fell asleep during Professor Bins’ lectures). “Amazing,” he looked around, awed by the gadgets and technology that he previously hadn’t been, seeming to examine Carson’s Earth-based microscope with fascination. Carson didn’t bother to tell him that Merlin hadn’t touched that, certainly not stroked it reverently that way.
“I’d like to do some testing, just to confirm, of course. The genes . . . erm . . . the parts of your blood that control . . . things . . . well, we can read them, but the meaningful part is actually the proteins that . . .”
Lupin had this deer in the headlights look that might have been funny if Carson hadn’t found it slightly pathetic - he still had trouble reconciling the power of wizards with their ignorance. “Never mind. The important thing is that you turn a few things on. I’ll see if I can get Rodney to . . .”
“Dr. McKay?”
Carson nodded.
“Is there anyone else?”
“Yes, I’m sure Radek would be willing.”
“It’s just that Dr. McKay doesn’t like me very much. He keeps glaring and saying something about the temperature in my room if I don’t ‘back off’ - of what, I’m not sure. I did have to use a warming charm yesterday, but . . .”
Carson sighed, rolling his eyes. It was just like Lupin to assume the best when possibly the most capable (and jealous) man on the base was threatening him. “Oh, that’s just Rodney. He’s jealous of all the time you’re spending with Colonel Sheppard. Probably thinks the two of you are involved and is plotting his revenge at this very moment.”
“So he and James are serious then?”
“Looks like. God help us all,” Carson mumbled, going back to his equipment. He’d see what he could do about this whole werewolf problem. It couldn’t be much different than Colonel Sheppard turning into a giant bug, now could it?
<<<>>>
Draco Malfoy held his head high. He didn’t run a nervous hand through his hair or look down at his black silk robes or examine himself in the mirror. He knew he looked impeccable, even if that was the only thing he did know.
The courtroom was down deep in the bowels of the Ministry, strategically placed at the end of a dark corridor, long and foreboding, high ceilings designed to make you shrink in the face of justice. Draco stood tall, walking proud (Malfoys were always proud), flanked by two Aurors whose names he hadn’t bothered to remember.
They didn’t scare him. And neither did the ministry. After the Dark Lord, reality seemed muted; just the smallest spark of anger in his great consciousness and all around him suffered. These Ministry dolts would trip over their own bureaucracy long before they reached even that point.
Draco waited for one of the Aurors to open the door for him, ignoring the flashing of wizarding cameras, the pinched accusatory faces of speculative onlookers, the hate in the eyes of all the righteously naïve bystanders whose only knowledge of the war was that it added a twinge of fear to their otherwise boring lives.
He gave the cameras his best attitude, sneered right back at the glaring faces and took his seat at the front of the room, not even flinching as the restraints wrapped easily around his wrists and ankles.
“Draco Malfoy,” a voice boomed down from the tall central podium before him, like a God passing down his commands from on high. Draco could just make out the grizzled old face of Rufus Scrimgeour staring down at him accusingly, a bellicose fire burning in his eyes as he shook his lion-like mane back from his face.
Draco stared placidly up at him. If he’d been a muggle, he might have questioned the mixture of the executive and the judiciary, but wizards, especially pure-blooded ones, could not be bothered by the governance of the multitudes.
“You are charged with treason, conspiracy to murder, violence against wizard-kind, muggle-baiting and torture, use of Unforgivable Curses, and unauthorized under-age sorcery.”
Draco almost laughed at the last one. So what? Were they going to charge their precious Potter too? And the weasel? And all the goody-two-shoes that had fought on the so-called side of light? Draco snorted. He doubted it. Draco was not fool enough to claim that his side had not done horrible things in the war, but at the very least, they were consistent.
The trial seemed to pass by quickly, almost beyond Draco’s interest. They would declare him guilty no matter what, that was for certain. McNair’d been sentenced to execution the day before, and Crabbe’s father the day before that. Draco’s own parents were already dead - his father killed in the final showdown and his mother by the Dark Lord, as punishment. There wasn’t a lot of hope for any of the old families. Why keep them around when the victors could divide up their ancient property as the spoils of war? There could not be victory without spoils.
“Do you deny that you tortured those muggles? You dropped one from the height of a Quidditch goalpost.”
“I don’t deny it,” Draco replied evenly, not even sure who it was that he was responding to. “But if I hadn’t, the Dark Lord would have killed my mother, my father.”
There were murmurs in the crowd. It sounded as though one woman said, “And we would have been glad to have been rid of him.”
Draco’s jaw clenched. He’d never been under the delusion that his father as a saint, but Draco’s world was lonely, empty now without him. But did that matter to these people? No, of course not. Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater; he couldn’t have been a very good father. His son should’ve been glad to be rid of him. Except he wasn’t. Harry Potter wasn’t the only orphan of this war - just because Draco’s father was an enemy didn’t mean it hurt any less.
“So you’re saying that you were coerced?” a small hawkish looking witch to the right enquired.
“Yes.” So Draco wasn’t an upstanding moral citizen, willing to sacrifice everything to fight against the bad things in this world. That didn’t mean that he should be killed - head chopped off with an axe by some contracted squib, unable to use the death to splinter his soul. Draco shook his head. The ministry claimed that a wizard’s life was worth no more than a muggle’s, but did a soul matter any less because its breaking could harm only a small few?
The witch nodded. “We may be willing to grant you leniency, considering your proximity to Riddle and your youth, but . . . the path to good must be a conscious choice, my boy. To fall unequivocally to terror without even the attempt to resist is just as dangerous as the will to power.”
Draco disagreed - what had all of those lame ministry pamphlets been then? And what about the arrests of those so far from Death Eaters that they probably couldn’t even recognize a snake if it curled around their big toe?
“Can you offer some instance in which you did not simply bend to Tom Riddle’s will?”
To not bend to the Dark Lord’s will when living day in and day out in his presence? This woman couldn’t even begin to understand . . . they were all just worker bees in a vast hive, their free will as much of a farce as this pathetic spectacle they were engaged in at this very moment. These people couldn’t possible understand the many flavors of fear - the stifling sparkling of the Dark Lord’s anger, the constant tingle of paranoia, the desperate race against failure.
Draco felt the mark burned black into the pale flesh of his arm twinge. Only those truly marked by darkness could fully understand.
“I slowed the process down when I could. I was quick to identify the mistakes of others - so he would discard possible servants. I surrendered when the time came.” Draco closed his eyes, trying not to remember that mudblood looking down at him over his Auntie Bella’s body, eyes flashing with challenge, daring him to move and let her finish him.
Rufus Scrimgeour, who had been pacing agitatedly but still not seeming to pay much attention before this, stopped at this, turning as he bellowed, “And how are any of these more than acts of cowardice? Slowing progress? By how much? Turning others in - just another way to climb the ladder. And surrendering . . . you call tossing your wand away to gain your life an act of good?”
Draco gulped. What more was there to say? The public wanted to never live in fear that any of the Death Eaters might follow in the path of their master. They wanted the darkness excised - as though there could ever be a world that acted independent of power. Whatever Draco said here - they would condemn him. He was just as doomed as his parents in the end. His bloodline had always been what defined him. Why, in death, should it be any different?
“He did act with courage,” a voice interrupted. Chairs creaked as people turned, punctuating the familiar voices’ statement with a gasp. Draco could not turn around, but he heard the whisper galloping wildly through the crowd.
“Harry Potter . . .” he murmured. ”To the bloody rescue.” His day just kept getting worse.
<<<>>>
Remus bounced on his heels, half sprawled out on James’ bed. Yes, he understood that his old friend had a life here, and apparently a boyfriend (not that this was particularly uncommon for wizards - no matter what strange rules the muggles had about it). But he didn’t belong here. He couldn’t exactly spend time making friends with the rest of the linguistics department - not when he didn’t understand what they were talking about half the time. If the history of wizardry had been half as bloody as the history of the ancient muggle world, nobody would’ve been surprised by Voldemort’s arrival on the scene.
But, regardless of what his colleagues might believe, Remus was learning a lot from these muggles. It was clear that these Ancients - who had built this city and written its history in the language of magic, had been a kind of proto-wizards. They were definitely connected by bloodline - that was positively the case (well, as far as Carson could tell with his blood sacrificing spells). And they had been just as obsessed with eternal life as the last of Salazar Slytherin’s heirs had been.
Remus shook the day’s discoveries from his head. He’d speak to James about the true origins of the Wraith at a later date - if James ever showed up, of course.
He pulled out his wand, “Tempus atlanti,” he flicked it laconically. It’d taken a while to figure out that he’d have to adjust the time spell for the different timekeeping system of this planet.
John had promised that he’d be back from the ‘lab’ with Rodney about an hour and a half ago. He briefly considered using the strange muggle communications device (an interesting alternative to the Floo network, he supposed, though a lot smaller than a fireplace). But, then again, did he really want to interrupt if they weren’t really in ‘the lab?’
Remus chuckled. He’d forgotten how James got when he was smitten. With a shake of his head, he stood, walking past the muggle artwork to the table next to James’ bed and the strange curved black wand sitting there. He’d seen Major Lorne point one into the Stargate the other day, heard the loud crack that usually signified a spell gone wrong. He ran his finger along the side of it, feeling slick metal, hard where a wand was soft and pliable and organic.
There was something powerful there, though, and it had Remus so entranced that he didn’t even hear the door swish open and James enter.
“Don’t touch that!” James shouted, reaching out and snatching the loud black wand away. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s loud,” Remus affirmed.
James sighed, pulling out the smaller wand and pointing it a one of the potted plants in the corner - a boom like an exploding Snap sounded and then the pot shattered.
“Reparo,” Remus remarked idly, turning away before he could see the pot repair itself. The wand wasn’t so great - a Reducto charm could be just as effective.
James sighed, walking over to the pot and pulling out a small roundish fragment of metal. He dropped it into Remus’ hand.
“This broke that?” Remus asked, incredulous.
“At high speeds this thing can break you too - tear through flesh like it was a Christmas pudding.”
Remus shrugged. “You could probably deflect it with a shield charm.”
“A shield charm will stop the Unforgivables too. The difference is that with this,” James held up the small black wand, “you just have to press a button. You can do Avada Kedavra and not even mean it.”
Remus gulped. He’d never thought much of muggles and their funny little wars - as though territory and that shiny black potion they pulled out of the ground really meant that much. He’d never thought . . . well, he’d never taken them that seriously, not when they walked about without ever knowing that there was this great evil out there, wanting to kill them just for the blood that ran in their veins - and more than able to do it, too.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim carved wooden box. It was one of Ollivander’s (though the man himself had disappeared with the war, Dumbledore had left it in a secret compartment in his office, saved just for James).
“Ebony and dragon’s heartstring. Picked specially for you.”
<<<>>>
Rodney found them on the firing range. He’d had to resort to the city’s sensors (and the way he’d programmed them to follow the subcutaneous transmitters of each expedition member). On an ordinary day, it’d be one of the first places he’d check, but with John’s shoulder wound still in the healing phase, he’d catch hell from Carson being anywhere near it.
But there he was, slouched back against the wall, eyes smoldering behind a pair of safety goggles. Pinloop was the one firing the gun, one arm steady before him. He hit the target every single time.
Rodney gaped. The man looked like he might be blown over by a loud recoil, but there he was, firing a gun with an intensity that reminded him far too much of John.
When the target had been sufficiently obliterated, he lowered the gun, pulling off the glasses and tucking them into his pocket.
“You’re a natural,” John said, nonplussed.
“Not that different than a wand,” Pinloop replied, equally unenthusiastic.
Wand? Was that like the British word for flashlight? Rodney’d have to ask Carson sometime.
It was about then that Pinloop turned and noticed him, reaching for his pocket. John moved on him then, griping his arm and whispering something that sounded like, ‘oblivion.’ Rodney gritted his teeth, noticing how close they stood together, how John, who cringed whenever anyone except Rodney tried to touch him, was voluntarily co-inhabiting another person’s space.
“Dr. Pinloop, that’s um . . . you’re a good shot, I see.” He was a lot better shot than Rodney, that was for sure. But in all fairness, Rodney had always had a mild case of astigmatism - made shooting hard.
“It’s Lupin,” the man corrected with a smile, completely unfazed. “But you can call me Remus, if you’d prefer.”
Rodney narrowed his eyes. He’d just finished reading over Pinloop’s personal file - what there was of it. Yes, he’d transferred to USC from Oxford where he studied linguistics and ethnomusicology (which would have been wonderful if Oxford had an ethnomusicology degree in the 1980s). He’d grown up in some city Rodney didn’t know existed. He’d gone to some private boarding school that Rodney had never heard of. And he now taught at some little liberal arts college that Rodney didn’t care about (liberal arts was a waste of oxygen in his honest opinion . . . and paper too). But the strange part was that Rodney didn’t know a single University (liberal arts and conservative conservatories, even) that would hire a professor who’d never published. It was just absurd.
He squinted. Considering the man’s supposed origins (and how in the hell did one learn Latin, Sanskrit, Mandarin, and Phoenician in Liverpool anyhow? He had to be something else . . . John’s secret ex-husband? Part of the strange society of secret handshakes and fuzzy hair that John and Carson seemed to be constantly engaging in? Whatever it was, it wasn’t academia.
“Well, Regis, the point is . . .”
“Remus.”
“The point is that Cadman’s team just uncovered a possible ZPM storage site, and with Corrigan down with the flu and Parker’s team out on some crazy hunt for the answer to life, the universe and everything, and all the ‘cultural’ people completely useless in technical language, we were thinking to recruit one of the newbies. Carson says you have the gene. And since you’re such an excellent shot . . .”
“He’s not going,” John interrupted, in his ‘because I say so’ voice.
Rodney glared. “He signed up for fieldwork in another galaxy, Sheppard, and he’s like Terminator with the terrified paper target. He’ll be fine.”
“But . . .” Sheppard began, only to have Regis silence him with a look. “Fine,” he gritted out, glaring at both of them in equal measure.
At the briefing two days later, Rodney was not at all surprised to learn that he, Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla would be replacing Lorne’s team as Dr. Pinloop’s escort. It figured.
<<<>>>
Ronon did not like Dr. Lupin. Aside from the fact that he kept whispering to Sheppard about Ronon being half of a ‘giant,’ there was something about him. His movements were graceful in walking - long and loping like an animal’s, but he had the scent of too many books - like McKay, but not afraid enough. He wandered around like a few of the newer Marines who seemed to have come to this galaxy thinking that they could tame it, which was something that not even the Ancestors had managed.
Ronon grumbled, taking a seat next to McKay on a particularly comfortable-looking boulder outside of the ruins. It was a nice day, though that was no reason to let his guard down. Still, Ronon had noticed McKay’s hostility, tension following him around like the stink of a warblat hog. Ronon wasn’t big on team dynamics, but if he didn’t pacify McKay soon, the hike back to the jumper would be a very long one.
“You’re tense,” he said, staring out into the bushes.
“Of course I’m tense. Did you see the size of those mosquitoes back there? I’m probably already being infected by Pegasus malaria as we speak.”
Ronon took a whiff of chemical-tainted air, wrinkling his nose. “You used enough of your bug repeller.”
“It’s not 100% foolproof,” McKay sulked, one hand holding a powerbar, the other his data slab. “Not that you’d care. Mosquitoes only bite those with an IQ over ninety. I’m sure you’re perfectly safe.”
Ronon snorted. He was used to McKay insulting his intelligence, just not with the same distracted stress in his voice. “You’re mad.”
“I’m not.”
“Did Sheppard have sex with Dr. Lupin?”
“What?” McKay rounded on him, almost dropping the data slab and getting chocolate on his lip, gaping at Ronon like that.
Ronon shrugged. “Sheppard likes him. You don’t. Like that Chaya woman.”
“You weren’t even here then!”
“People talk.”
“And if Sheppard was sleeping with him, why would I care? He’s a grown man. He can sleep with whoever he wants.”
Ronon wasn’t exactly sure how the Earthers liked to respond to obvious lies, but he’d recently watched a box-picture with Lieutenant Cadman about a blonde girl with a lot of clothes, so he said, “Duh.”
McKay collapsed back against the rock. “You have no idea how much I hate you.”
Ronon could never tell if McKay meant this as an insult or a declaration of love, so he shrugged. “Sheppard wouldn’t betray you, McKay. You can relax.”
McKay looked over his shoulder longingly, where Sheppard and Lupin were discussing a large stone tablet, laughing even as they traced the symbols carved into the rock. “This is why I do the thinking and you do the shooting.”
And with that, he stood, walking over and into the conversation about something called ‘Ancient Runes.’
Ronon stood, stalking around the perimeter. There wasn’t a lot to do on missions like these, which was why Sheppard’s team rarely did them. But Sheppard had insisted that they go on this one. Dr. Lupin had trained with him back on Earth and Sheppard was very protective. That was fine. Only next time, Ronon was not coming along.
The ruins weren’t very big, so it wasn’t long before he ran into Teyla, also patrolling.
“Ronon,” she said, eyes flickering to meet his, before returning to her surroundings. “Are they making progress?”
“Slowly,” Ronon grumbled. “They were arguing about ‘numerology.’”
Teyla looked as perplexed as he was.
“McKay thinks it’s voodoo. Sheppard disagrees.”
“So it will be some time before they finish.”
“McKay thinks Sheppard is having sex with Dr. Lupin.”
“So it will be a great deal of time before they finish.” Teyla sighed. “Rodney must learn that John may have friends outside of the team, even if all of us do not like him.” She gave Ronon a pointed, scolding look.
“There’s something strange about him.”
He expected a lecture about tolerating the Earthling’s strange habits or supporting Sheppard when McKay got pissy around him, but instead Teyla sighed. “I agree. But he is John’s friend and we must respect that.”
Ronon nodded and turned to make his way back into camp. It was odd, though, that in all their time speaking of a many of Earth’s customs, McKay’s past as the ‘king geek’ and the history of Teyla’s people, and Ronon’s own training on Sateda, they never spoke about Sheppard’s friends, the place he called home, his parents. Perhaps it was the fact that Earth was so different from Ronon’s world, but this man, Dr. Lupin, just didn’t seem how Ronon would’ve pictured it. He didn’t even like football.
Ronon was just entering hearing range of the end of one of McKay’s long rants about why a set of energy numbers did not mean that the Wraith only possessed partial souls (Ronon was unaware that physics had anything to do with souls, but what did he know?). He looked over towards the pillars where he wasn’t sure he’d seen any numbers, when he saw it - a flash of movement just outside his vision.
His weapon was raised in a second, heart pounding even as he took calm steady breaths. Whatever it was had chosen a good hiding place, nestled between a set of boulders. Ronon advanced with quiet deliberate steps, hearing Sheppard shush McKay off to his side.
Ronon approached the rock, hearing Sheppard whisper to Teyla over the radio. The thing was dark, almost a shadow, but with a strange boney membrane stretched between its limbs like a carel rodent.
“Don’t move,” Ronon commanded. And it didn’t. It just stared at Ronon with piercing red eyes, mesmerizing him until he heard McKay shriek behind him.
His weapon was set to stun, so Ronon felt no remorse in taking the shot, even if the creature had not budged. Ronon whirled around to see more creatures standing in a on outcropping above the entrance to the ruins. They shrieked right back, perfectly mimicking the timber of McKay’s shout.
Sheppard had his weapon firing, one of them already shot down next to where McKay was sprawled out on his back, moaning and clasping a gash on his arm. Ronon didn’t hesitate to rush forward, firing all the way, listening to Teyla over his shoulder providing suppressive fire at the creatures Ronon could hear crunching through the trees.
Dr. Lupin, too, was firing, looking confused when his handgun ran out of ammunition. Ronon picked up McKay’s fallen pistol and tossed it to him, as the man was down for the count, moaning and writhing on the ground.
Like those ‘clowns’ that Sheppard always talked about, the black things just kept coming, forcing the group into a tight defensive huddle over McKay’s fallen body.
When all four handguns had run out of ammunition, Dr. Lupin turned his attention to the lifesigns device. Ronon didn’t stop to note that he also had the touch of the Ancestors, only that he gasped when he looked at the display.
“James!” he shouted. “There’s no way we can hold them. Let me . . .”
“No!” Sheppard shouted. “I’m going for the jumper. Stay here and lay cover fire!”
Ronon didn’t need to be told twice. He spun around, taking out a few more shadowy figures as Sheppard forced himself down away from the mouth of the ruins and in the opposite direction of the jumper. There was no way he could have made it through the seeming wall of darkness above them.
It wasn’t long after Sheppard left that Ronon heard the stutter of one of the Earth weapons jamming up. He looked up at Teyla, just a second before a mass of dark things broke the ranks, swarming around Teyla, lifting her up above their heads, kicking and screaming all the way.
“Teyla!” Ronon shouted, even as he fired madly into the crowd, holding off the rest as they carried her away. They were being slowly surrounded, but the creatures now seemed focused on taking Teyla, their reasons unclear.
“I can hold them off,” Lupin shouted, voice much more steady that McKay’s would have been in the situation. “Go after her!”
Lupin didn’t have a weapon, and Ronon still didn’t like him, but there was an intensity to his voice, a command that seemed to almost echo in Ronon’s head, filling him with confidence, the desire to please. He trusted Lupin. He would do whatever he said.
And with that, he took off running into the forest, up in the direction that they’d taken Teyla.
Ronon kept firing, gunning them down, one by one. He had no idea what Lupin was doing back at the ruins, but it was working, because no more of the creatures seemed to be appearing. He had to be careful not to hit Teyla, who was now writing and moaning just as McKay had been. But in these conditions, Ronon was a sure shot. They had no weapons to fire back at him, and they’d taken his friend. It wasn’t long before he was running up to Teyla, trying to calm her frantic shouts, soothe her enough to carry her back to the others.
It was then that he saw it, another flash of motion, but this time from another animal - all rich brown fur where the other creatures had been black. It was tall, much bigger than they had been, a crown of hooked branches resting upon its head and wise, familiar eyes.
It was limping, a bloody gash across one flank, a gash from falling against something sharp, Ronon would guess.
The creature stared at him for one long moment before dashing off into the forest, injured limb hardly limiting its long easy bounds.
Ronon took a moment to be mesmerized before lifting Teyla onto his shoulder and running back towards the ruins.
Later, Ronon didn’t connect the creature in the forest with Sheppard’s slight limp or the box-picture the Marines later showed him with the guys who fought in the war in the jungle and mined some black mineral and shot animals for fun.
He was too busy worrying about his two teammates laid up in the hospital and later with how Lupin had managed to incapacitate a whole field of strange black creatures without a single weapon.
<<<>>>
Ronon wasn’t particularly a hard man to find. Remus asked a few of the passing Marines, and a cute blonde woman named Laura pointed him in the direction of the training room. She made him miss Tonks. “Just follow the sounds of manly grunting and bones being crushed and that’s where he’ll be,” she remarked casually.
Sure enough, there were suspiciously bone-crunching sounds coming from one of the rooms that the expedition had set aside as a gym. Remus approached warily, surprised as usual when the doors opened for him automatically - there were many self-opening doors in Hogwarts, but most of them were a lot more . . . finicky.
Remus entered just in time to see a young man wearing the green spotted outfit worn by the military go flying across the room. He winched when the poor man landed with a crunch.
Ronon grinned and Remus tried not to shudder. There was something about that man, as friendly as he might be. There was a certain feral quality to him: a wildness in his eyes that spoke to a familiar pull deep in Remus’ chest. He tried not to think about it.
“Lupin,” the man said.
“Mr. Dex,” Remus acknowledged. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
The man grunted, picking up a towel and wiping a small sheen of sweat of his brow. In the corner, the marine struggled to his feet and said, “You’re not interrupting anything, Sir. In fact, I was just . . .” he pointed the door and scurried away, hunched over one shoulder.
“Are you all right?” Remus asked with concern. The half-giant didn’t seem to be paying much attention.
“I’m good,” the soldier said with a wince.
“Next week, Waterman?” Ronon’s tone did not allow for argument.
“Yes, Sir.”
When the man was out of sight, Ronon pointed. “Sheppard likes me to keep an eye on the lazy ones.”
Strange, since as far as Remus could remember, James was one of the lazy ones. He’d never had to work at anything a day in his life (well, except maybe History of Magic, but only because he spent most of it passing notes with Sirius or mooning over Lily).
Catching Remus’ look, Ronon smirked. “I train with Sheppard four times a week.”
Remus wanted to be friendly and conspiratorial, he really did, but he’d rather just get this over with. He’d already done Dr. McKay back on the planet, now only Ronon remained. “I wanted to show you something.”
Remus reached into his pocket, faster going for his wand than Ronon had been going for one of the knives James said the man kept in his hair.
“Obliviate!” he yelled, careful to target the particular memory, the fact that Remus had been alone with no weapons, the hunt into the forest where James had said they’d seen each other, this most recent conversation.
He sighed, spinning on his heels and heading for the door.
Only to have James walk straight into him on his way in. Just his luck.
“Moony? What are you doing here?”
Remus didn’t really have time to be flushed or embarrassed or make excuses. James was a smart man. He took one look at Remus and the unconscious figure on the floor behind him before his jaw tightened in anger and he cast a quick spell of “Muffliato!”
“You didn’t,” he growled, stalking past Remus to help his friend into a more comfortable position, sprawled unconscious as he was on the floor.
“He saw you, James. He knew I didn’t have a weapon to fight off all those wood sprites! What was I supposed to do?”
James had the big man resting against the wall, his jacket beneath the man’s head. “You were supposed to let me handle it. He’s an alien. He doesn’t even know what a deer is. And we could have come up for an explanation for the other thing - you’ve got the gene. It could’ve been something in the ruins. You didn’t have to . . .” he gestured to guy slumped next to him.
But he did. Sure, Remus didn’t like having to obliviate muggles. They were people, not toys to be played around with as wizards pleased. But secrecy was something their society held dear and when there wasn’t any other option, yes he did believe in it. There were just some things you couldn’t let slip. But there was still that reckless streak in James - the one that thought that the rules stopped applying when he wanted them to.
Remus took in a deep breath. “When performed correctly obliviation is a perfectly harmless technique. It’s ministry standard . . .”
“The ministry isn’t here. And you of all people should know that just because they approve something, it isn’t necessarily right. Here, it isn’t . . . look, how would you feel if someone could just take away your memories - even the bad ones?”
Remus sighed. There had been attempts after the war - mediwitches in back-allys offering precision obliviation. Remus remembered the taste of blood on his lips, gritty and metallic, powerful too. He shook his head, trying to dispel it. He’d never even considered getting rid of those memories, no matter how terrible. “I’m sorry.”
James sighed, rising. “I know.” He patted Remus’ shoulder. “It’s a different world out here. I’m . . .” he looked down at his hands. James had always been all bluster, all charm, horrible at discussing his feelings. “I’m different.”
Remus nodded. They’d all changed. He had Tonks; James had his new very-annoying muggle lover; Harry was growing up, far too wise for his years. But that didn’t mean that he loved James any less. It didn’t . . . it couldn’t mute all the time they’d spent together, the instant connection of just knowing someone, no matter how much they’d changed.
“Come back,” Remus implored.
“There’s nothing for me there,” James said quietly. He gestured to the city around them, all metal and sleek mechanical curves where James’ world should be stone and mortar and tradition, breathing with magic. “We’re at war.”
“And peace somehow makes our world less valid? You’re a wizard, James. You can’t deny that. Weren’t you the one who was always telling me that?”
“Some people do.”
“I’m not talking about a half-blood who never really wanted to be a wizard in the first place! Or some crazy American non-practitioners! I’m talking about someone who was born a wizard, married a witch, fought in our war, gave his life for it!”
“I gave my life to protect Harry!” James shouted, face red and angry.
“And he needs you to do more than that!” It was rare that Remus really yelled, but James just didn’t understand. His own parents had been distant at best - Gryffindors but proud of their heritage, not much different than Sirius’ family before the war. And he’d barely had the chance to get to know Harry before he died. Even if James Potter knew more of sacrifice than he did of a father’s real job, there was no question that if ever Harry needed someone, it was now.
“He’s lived without me this long, Remus. It’s one thing to grow up an orphan and another to know that your father left you to fight the most evil being of our time all by yourself!”
“You yourself told me that you didn’t have a choice. Harry’s a smart boy. He’ll understand that.” Remus wanted to talk about Harry’s capacity for forgiveness, his ability to still love after all that was taken from him: the fact that he’d not just survived, but strived with a moral compass as strong as his parents’. But he couldn’t say those things to James, not when he’d gotten to know Harry and James hadn’t.
James calmed from his anger, the sense of magic in the air slowly fading. “I would have given anything to be there for him, Remus, but I’m not the same man anymore. I’m a muggle now.”
“And that’s so different? Harry won’t care. You’re his father.”
“I’m different in other ways too,” James whispered.
“Is this about Dr. McKay?” Remus asked, tentatively. Only James would be able to summon guilt over cheating after his wife had been dead for 17 years. “Because I doubt Harry would expect you to be celibate.”
“That’s not it, Remus . . . it’s just that I died. I’m not sure I should go back.”
Remus nodded. There had been magical charms - James’ will had gone into effect nearly immediately, his wand shattered. Even though they’d never found a body (as happened from time to time), he had been dead. There was no telling what kind of backfire there might be if he somehow negated that status.
And there was still the matter that the only other wizard ever to return from a similar state was Lord Voldemort, and the last thing the Wizarding world needed right now was proof that Tom Riddle’s quest for eternal life might not have been in vain. James would be faced with all sorts of accusations, scandal even, thrusting him into a limelight that he’d always been able to deftly avoid where his son could not.
But then, there was Harry. Remus hated to use it, but he reached out, clasping James’ arm, “I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t important. Harry hasn’t been the same since the final confrontation. Nobody can get through to him and . . .”
James’ hazel eyes flashed with a sudden sting of pain, looking over Remus as though he might find the answer painted there. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Remus didn’t tell him that he hoped that he might stay. Best friends and fathers didn’t grow on trees, after all. The expedition would find another muggle to replace him.
<<<>>>
Rodney ignored Caldwell’s raised eyebrow as he stalked off down the corridor, duffel-bag in hand. The rest of the crew knew not to question him - not in this rusty bucket of bolts. He was surprised that hiccupping woman could manage to find her ass with both hands, let alone the wherewithal to actually keep this thing spaceworthy.
“Dr. McKay?” Caldwell asked, mouth in that grim line that indicated the bug up his ass was lodging a protest against the disruption of his precious routine (the only way you got to be essentially a grocery delivery man with an intergalactic space ship was by being the most anal apple in the barrel, Rodney had decided).
“What? I’m not allowed personal leave? I’ll have you know that with the work I do for the SGC, Earth, and the universe at large I should . . .”
“Be crowned king of all existence?” Caldwell sneered. Rodney hated that man. “I have no problem with you taking personal leave, but in order for my crew to make preparations we have to be notified in advance.”
Rodney snorted. “Please, I checked with Hermiod: the oxygen scrubbers are only operating to 35% capacity, the mess is well-stocked, and you don’t have to worry about quarters, because I’ll be sharing with Colonel Sheppard.”
“Dr. McKay, I don’t want to ask but . . .”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Then don’t. I’ve shared a tent with him offworld. I can deal with his snoring. Besides, the number of times I’ve saved him and that ridiculous head of hair, he owes me.”
Caldwell looked suspicious. Or constipated. But then again, Caldwell always looked constipated. Maybe he’d been eating those Asgard protein cubes. “I’ll just check this with Dr. Weir,” he grumbled, as though that was any sort of threat. Rodney’d dealt with Elizabeth by saying, ‘I’m going to Earth for a few weeks. Zelenka’s in charge. If you say anything, I’ll write what I really think about everyone in my next round of performance reviews.’ Elizabeth hadn’t even paused before saying, ‘I’m glad you’re taking some time to spend with your family, Rodney.’
Rodney nodded to Caldwell and strode off down the corridor, overriding the lock on Sheppard’s door with barely a thought. Maybe he’d catch them in there . . . doing unspeakable things to each other, or whatever stiff-necked Brits did for fun. Maybe they played naked cribbage or read Victorian pornography or something.
Instead, he found John lounging in his bed, playing sudoku on his computer. It figured. When he looked up to meet Rodney’s eyes he seemed surprised if not flustered.
Rodney dumped his bag on the upper bunk, ignoring the way John was gaping at him. “Sorry about the last minute. Jeannie sent me a letter with the Daedalus. Madison has her first piano recital in a few weeks and I thought I’d . . . do the Uncle thing.” It was a complete and utter lie.
John smiled at him. “Are you sure you’re not just here to spy on me and Remus?”
“Um . . .” Rodney looked down at his shoes. “No?”
John sighed. “Do you really have Madison’s piano recital?”
Rodney shook his head. He was a terrible liar.
“Look, Rodney, I don’t want to be a bastard or anything, but I was sort of looking forward to seeing a couple of old friends with Remus. And . . .”
“And I’m not invited.”
John grabbed his hand, looking down at it as though it might bite him. John was good at a lot of things, but offering comfort wasn’t one of them. “It’s not that I don’t love you, I just . . .”
“You’re embarrassed by me?”
“No. I’m just not sure if now would be the time to introduce you to them. I haven’t seen any of them in close to seventeen years.”
Rodney nodded. It made sense, he supposed. Though he didn’t have to like it. “Fine. I did want to get a chance to visit Jeannie, visit with Colonel Carter a bit.”
John’s eyes narrowed. “Carter?”
Rodney harrumphed, but he was secretly glad that John was jealous of Sam. That meant he had the right to be jealous right back. “Please. I’m so over her. Though if she wanted to join us in some sort of . . . well, that would be seriously hot. But I have a hot colonel of my own now and I don’t . . .”
John leaned over and kissed him. “I’m glad. Will you stop stalking Remus now? He’s getting a little jumpy.”
Rodney bit his lip. On Earth he’d have access to all sorts of background checks . . .
John rolled his eyes. “All right, go ahead and ask. You’re practically exploding with it.”
“You and he . . . you were never . . .”
“No,” John whispered, kissing Rodney lightly, just below his ear. “And if we had, it wouldn’t matter.” He boxed the ear he’d just kissed. If he wasn’t lying on a very narrow bed with a ridiculously hot colonel, Rodney might worry about John’s ability to be sweet one minute and violent the next. “When will you get it through your head that I’m with you, even if I sometimes wonder why? You know most people would react to this kind of behavior by getting a restraining order?”
Rodney pulled John in tighter, trying not to hug him too possessively. “You’re not most people.”
“So I’ve been told,” John moaned into Rodney’s mouth, his hands roaming down Rodney’s sides to lift up his t-shirt.
“Where are you going?”
“England. I’ll only be gone for a couple of weeks,” John kissed the words into Rodney’s jawline.
“Weeks? What could you possibly find to do in England for weeks?”
John shrugged, yanking at Rodney’s belt. As pleasant as it was, Rodney could spot a diversionary tactic a mile a way (he’d had practice with John Sheppard).
“John?”
“Look, I have some business to wrap up, okay? It’s just some stuff I have to take care of and I’m all yours. I promise,” John murmured, pawing at Rodney’s pants before giving up and just sticking his hand into the slit of Rodney’s boxers. “Are you done asking questions or can we fool around now?”
Actually, Rodney did have a rather pressing question. “Do you have any idea why Hermiod is wearing a hat? And what the hell is S.P.E.W?”
John just shrugged, giving Rodney one of his theatrically wet smacking kisses. “Maybe his head’s cold.”
<<<>>>
The night was clear and joyless out in the marshes, stars flickering feebly in a velvety darkness, as cloying and thick with moisture as if the clouds had already come in off the channel.
Far off in the distance a single light flickered, a haunting melody spilling forth, a lullaby to a sleeping child rocking by the warmth of an old-fashioned fire.
Not much is known of the marsh people - half spirits, fairies, wild elves, they would say, haunting muggles with their ghostly light or whispering quiet poetry that sucked the tide in.
But the most important thing to remember about the marsh people was that, where they lived, in their exquisite magical poverty deep in the bog, what they did, what they ate, their dreams, their hopes, their ambitions . . . none of it mattered, because nobody outside cared. There was a saying among wizards - if an elf falls in the forest, does he make a sound?
That’s why nobody noticed when the light in the heart of the swamp slowly flickered out, the sullen wails of the colicky child by the fire suddenly quieted, and a snake slithered silently back into its nest of vipers down in that foggy hollow, leaving behind it nothing but a kiss.
Part IIIa