Ancient Blood (3/4) (SGA/HP)

[mhalachai]

Ancient Blood (3/4)
A Stargate Atlantis/Harry Potter story

Summary: Just as he thinks he's settled into his new life at Atlantis, everything in John's life starts to fall apart again.
Rating: This part PG-13 for swearing; R for the first part.
Disclaimer: Sony and MGM own all things Stargate Atlantis. J.K. Rowling owns all Harry Potter. I'm only borrowing and will return them at the end of the fic.
Spoilers: General season two for SGA, some season nine for SG-1 in chapter 4, Half-Blood Prince for HP.
Pairings: My new OTP, John/Atlantis, and some dysfunctional John/Teyla.
Word count:: 3,484 this part, 23,595 in total. Complete.
Note: This is broken into two parts because LJ has a post limit of 64 kb and this is 67. Alas. Anyway, I can leave you with a fun cliffhanger that you can quickly resolve. This is how much I love you.

Sequel to Songs Across the Ocean

Part One ~~ Part Two ~~ Part Three ~~ Part Four

~~~

"What do you mean, no?" Rodney asked, running a scan on the arch. "It is amazing! I can't figure out if the power readings are coming from the device or from another source."

The veil moved in the dead air, fluttering as if something behind it wanted to escape. "Rodney--"

"And I have never seen readings like this before! They look Ancient in origin, but slightly different from what we've seen in the city." As Rodney spoke, he stepped closer to the arch, his hand only inches from the veil.

John grabbed Rodney's jacket and hauled him away from the arch. The scientist stumbled as he went back, but John took hold of his shoulders and shoved him against the wall of the cave.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rodney yelled.

"Rule one about dealing with archways with freaky power sources on alien planets," John ground out, his heart pounding painfully against his ribs. "Do. Not. Touch!" He gave Rodney a hard shake.

Then Teyla and Ronon were there, pulling them apart. "I wasn't going to touch it!" Rodney shouted. "I was taking readings!"

"We all learned a lesson from your experience," Teyla said, putting herself in front of Rodney. "He would not have touched the arch."

"What if something came out from behind the veil, huh?" John demanded, shrugging off Ronon's hands. "Or if you tripped?" The idea of Rodney falling through the arch, just as Sirius has vanished from his life, choked off whatever else John tried to say.

"I wasn't going to trip, I know what I'm doing!" Rodney's glare turned confused. "What is wrong with you?"

John shook his head. He looked down and realized his feet were directly on the circle of runes. Taking a step to the side moved him out of the magic, and instantly his anxiety level plummeted. He sucked in a deep breath. "I don't want you getting hurt," he said.

"I'm not going to get hurt," Rodney said, frowning in his confusion. "Why do you keep harping on that?"

John picked up a tiny rock from the floor, and hurled it through the arch. The edge of the stone hit the veil and then vanished into the arch.

Rodney blinked. "No sound."

"No sound."

"It should have come through the other side and hit the ground."

"Now do you get it?" John shone his P-90 light on the circle of carved runes. Unlike the protection circles John had seen as a child, this one was carved vertically in front of the arch, instead of on the ground around it.

"How did you know it was going to do that?" Ronon asked.

"Do what?" It had been almost two decades since John had needed to read runes, and he was having to wrack his brain. Was it at all possible that the Ancients had written these here before they left for Earth the thousand years ago? Had writing like this even existed back then?

"Know the stone wouldn't come out the other side."

John traced his fingers over the Wunjo rune and didn't answer. There was no way that this could be the same arch as the one in the Department of Mysteries, no possible chance there was another way back to Earth this way in this galaxy they hadn't found. Maybe there was more than one archway and veil, like there was more than one Stargate.

Like the Stargate. John traced another rune. Someone had carved the markings with magic; even touching them sent a familiar shiver up John's spine. "These are recent," John said, concentrating on the carvings in the wall. "There's not a lot of dust in them." He frowned as he moved his light up the wall. "Jesus, what fool would use Perth in this?"

"Colonel Sheppard? Hi," Rodney snapped. "What are you doing?"

"I believe he is reading the writing," Teyla said. "It is not a form of language I recognize."

"They're runes," John muttered, frowning harder as he took in more of the spell. Whoever had cast this thing had to be psychotic; the conflicting magic was intense. "Ancient runes from Earth. Not, like 'Ancient' ancient, just old."

"That's not possible," Rodney said. "Runes developed after the Ancients left this galaxy for Earth."

John stepped back into the circle, feeling the magic run over his skin. It felt like desperation and fear and horror. It was the first time John had tasted magic in so many years, and it made him want to scream. He stepped out. "Whoever cast this was in a hurry," he said, bending down to touch the center runes on the floor, directly in front of the archway. "They don't really line up, and anyone who put Mannaz and Hagalaz together couldn't have been thinking clearly." Like someone who was just hit with magic and shoved through an arch?

John shoved that wild hope down. Sirius was dead. He couldn't have done this. There was no good in hoping for the impossible.

"I'm going to interrupt this fascinating look into runeology," Rodney said. "Where the hell did you learn about this stuff?"

"High school girlfriend," John said automatically. "Rodney, can you find the power source or not?" John needed to leave this room before he decided to do something stupid. Like step behind the veil to see if I can get back London.

Or find Sirius.

"There doesn't appear to be a separate power source," Rodney said after a minute.

"So no ZPM."

"No. It's probably more like the quantum mirror back home."

"What's a quantum mirror?" Ronon asked from his position at the cave's entrance.

"Something that pushes you into a different reality," Rodney muttered. "Something you do not want to touch."

"Ronon, were these runes here when you came by the first time?" John asked as she stood up.

"Yeah."

John hesitated over the next question, but he had to know. "Do you get a... I don't know, a tingle, when you walk over the circle?"

Ronon actually turned around to give Sheppard a look. "What?"

"That's a no," John muttered. "How about you, Teyla?"

Teyla, who had been watching the scene with baffled interest, stepped over the circle, then back again. The veil fluttered slightly as she approached, but settled down when she moved away. "No, I do not."

"Maybe it's the Ancient gene?" Ronon suggested.

John flicked his eyes to Rodney. "What?" Rodney said. "I didn't feel anything."

"Scratch that." John looked around. The way the veil fluttered gave him the creeps, especially since he couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. What could it be?

The answer came to him in a flash. There were no voices.

The last time John had seen the arch on Earth, he and Luna had heard whispering voices behind the veil. Now, there was only silence.

"Let's get the hell out of here," John said.

"But what about the archway?" Rodney asked.

"We're leaving it. I'm not risking any accidents." John waited until the rest of his team moved out of the small cave and made himself bring up the rear. As he stepped out of the entrance, he gave the archway one final look. The veil fluttered, as if it knew he was leaving. He wanted nothing more than to pull back the veil and reach inside, and the thought of what he might find on the other side scared him more than anything.

Once they were close enough to the front of the cave to see sunlight, Rodney said, "Well, this was a waste of my valuable time."

"That's not all there is," Ronon said. He squinted off into distance while the rest filed out into the light.

"What else is there?" Teyla asked.

Ronon nodded down the hill. "By the crack in the rock, what looks like the ruins of an outpost."

"Why didn't you tell us this before we climbed up this mountain?" Rodney asked.

"Knew you'd complain less if you got to walk downhill to get to the rest of the ruins." Ronon looked over at John. "So, are we going?"

"Yes." John settled his P-90 against his side, wishing he'd brought his sunglasses. The bright sunlight bored into his brain, setting off his headache. It had to be the sun, not the incredibly disturbing blast from his past. The remembered feel of the magic was like a thin film of tar on his skin. It made him feel dirty; like a failure.

The rest of his team shared glances. "You're not going to faint or anything, are you?" Rodney asked. "Because you're kind of heavy, and if you are we should go back to the Jumper and go back to--"

"McKay, I'm fine!" John barked. "We came here for a reason, so let's just get on with it."

Ronon turned on his heel and began to make his way down the cliff face. Rodney gave John another indecipherable look, then followed.

"After you, Teyla," John said.

Teyla lifted her chin. "No. You go first."

"Not this again--"

"You can say what you want to Ronon and Dr. McKay, but you look as if you have just seen a Wraith."

"It's just a headache." John pulled a tiny pack of painkillers out of his pocket. "It's the sun."

"It is not the sun. It began in the cave."

John unscrewed the lid of his water bottle and knocked back the pills. "It's nothing."

"It is not nothing."

While John secured his canteen on his belt, he looked out at the horizon. Trees went on for as far as the eye could see, broken only by small cliffs and rises. Staring at them was easier than looking at Teyla. Hell, staring directly into the sun would be easier. "It's nothing that matters." With that, he started off after Rodney and Ronon. The soft sound of her boots over the rocky trail was the only way John knew Teyla was at his back.

And behind them was the arch, a mirror-perfect copy of the archway that had killed Sirius Black when John was fifteen. Of all the things John had tried to forget from his time as Harry Potter, the image of Sirius falling backwards through that arch was at the top of the list.

This was insane, surreal. Maybe those long years of trying to forget the past had fucked up his memory, and he was wrong.

Except the veil moved when no one was near. The thrown pebble didn't come out the other side. Someone from Earth had written those runes, and recently.

But it didn't seem possible. John didn't know a lot about intergalactic travel, leaving the nuts and bolts of that to Rodney and the other eggheads, but he knew it took a hell of a lot of energy to get from Earth to the Pegasus Galaxy. If there had been that kind of power in the room, Rodney's Ancient sensor would have picked it up.

Still. What was that quote Rodney had mentioned a few months ago? If you get rid of the impossible, then whatever is left must be the answer, however implausible?

One thing John had learned over the years was that very little was impossible.

~~~

"Hey, McKay, how long are you going to be?"

Rodney didn't look up. "At least a few hours. The power residue on these ruins seems indicative that there was a massive nuclear power source present within the last thousand years."

"Radiation?" John asked.

"Negligible." Rodney waved his hand. "Now shut up and let me concentrate."

John looked over at Ronon and Teyla. "Ronon, want to go take a look around?" The man nodded and settled his gun in his holster. "Teyla, can you stay with Rodney and make sure he doesn't get into any trouble?"

"Why do you always think I'm the one who gets into trouble?" Rodney asked hotly. "You're the one with a statistically impossible chance of getting in trouble."

John sighed. At least some things never changed. "Teyla?"

"I will stay with Dr. McKay," Teyla said. There was a challenge in her eyes that John didn't really understand. Before, John would have said it was because he was leaving her with Rodney while he and Ronon went off to have fun, but after her near-death experience and their little encounter...

What the hell was I thinking? "Look," John said quietly, pulling Teyla to the side. "Ronon knows the ground, and I need to make sure this place it safe before any more teams from Atlantis can come through."

"I am aware of that," Teyla said. Now John felt like an idiot for thinking something was wrong.

"Okay. We'll see you guys in a couple of hours. Report in every fifteen minutes."

"Very well," Teyla said, turning back to Rodney.

"Come on," Ronon said, twitching his jacket and stalking off into the bush. John followed him, trying hard to pay attention to the ground, to any potential threats, but the air was still and warm and silent, and Ronon's footsteps steady and rhythmic.

This can't... what? Be real? Make any sense? John fumbled the life-signs detector out of his pocket and ran a scan on the area. Only four little dots showed up, and the Rodney and Teyla dots were almost off the screen. I have to keep the mission in mind, check the area out for dangers, keep my team safe.

John rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. The painkillers weren't helping his headache, and gravity was feeling more intense than normal. He was starting to wonder if he'd made a mistake in going off-world when he was feeling so shity.

Carson let me come, he reminded himself. He never lets anyone go if they're in any real danger.

He shook his head. He would pull his shit together, and he would be fine. He had no choice.

"Where are we going?" he asked Ronon as the other man started to climb a small cliff.

Ronon glanced at John over his shoulder. "This ridge goes up over the ruins. I thought we'd see how defensible it is."

"Does it overlook the Stargate?" John asked, gritting his teeth and hauling his ass up the rise.

"Yeah."

As John almost lost his footing on some gravel, he reflected that what really mattered was that he keep perspective. He didn't know what to do about the arch, but he knew what to do about his life. He was John Sheppard, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force and military commanding officer on Atlantis. He'd put magic behind him. He had a new life, far removed from the Harry Potter he used to be, and wizardry.

That was real for him now.

"Why were you so spooked?" Ronon asked suddenly.

"What?"

"In the cave. You freaked out on McKay."

"Did not."

"Yeah, you did." Ronon knelt down to examine some marks in the dirt. "Why?"

"No reason." John stood tall and examined the area. In the distance, he could see the top curve of the Stargate, inactive. From this distance, they would be able to hear if a wormhole opened.

"Huh."

"What, 'huh'?"

"You're lying." Ronon rubbed at the ground, then stood up. "Just can't figure out why."

John wanted to protest that he wasn't lying, but the sun was hammering on his head and trying to think of the truth hurt enough.

"It's not important."

Ronon stepped over a log. "You know what I'm thinking? What you'd do to me if I was hiding something important to the mission."

"It's not--" What? Not important to the mission, that he recognized an artifact in Pegasus that looked just like something that had killed his godfather decades ago on Earth? Not important that someone had cast John's kind of magic on the cave? "It's complicated."

"Complicated how?"

John closed his eyes for a moment. "There's just stuff about... stuff I know, that no one knows."

"So stop being stupid and tell us."

John cracked an eyelid. "Are you calling me stupid?"

The look Ronon gave him was eloquent in its simplicity.

John's headset crackled. He glanced at his watch as he lifted his hand to respond. It had only been ten minutes since they left Teyla and Ronon. "Yes?" No response. "Teyla, Rodney, come in."

"We mean you no harm," Teyla's voice filtered over the headset, and it was abundantly clear that she was not speaking to John or Ronon. John whirled and was about to bolt down the hill when Ronon grabbed his arm and pointed the other direction. Of course, to cover the position from above. John motioned with his hand, and Ronon took point.

"Yes, no harm, no harm at all," Rodney said, his voice teetering on the edge of nervousness. "We're just happy to be here."

A mutter, too low to make out words or speaker, came over the headsets. Probably human, John decided as he crept noiselessly after Ronon. The Wraith would have resulted in more justified screaming from Rodney.

"We do not know what you mean," Teyla said. "We are alone here, looking for information about the Ancestors." A pause while the mutterer spoke some more. "Because they are the Ancestors of us all, no other reason."

Two indistinct voices murmuring.

"Cave? Why would we have gone into any cave?" Teyla asked smoothly.

John's stomach knotted up. Whoever Teyla was talking to hadn't shown up on the life-signs detector while they were in the cave, and couldn't have seen them entering or exiting the chamber with the arch. Unless that circle of protection was an alarm system and I triggered it when I walked over it. That meant there was a high possibility that Teyla and Rodney were facing off with a wizard.

John made himself stop and take a long, deep breath, chasing the cobwebs out of his head. Ronon pulled up and glared at John.

Speaking quietly, so his voice would be audible to Teyla and Rodney but not carry over their headsets to the others, John said, "Ronon, find some cover, spot me while I try and get the drop on them. Teyla, Rodney, we're on our way. Stall them. How many?"

As Ronon ran, John heard Teyla said, "Why are you so concerned with our presence, to bring five people with you here?"

More muttering.

"What?" Rodney exclaimed. "What are you talking about, are we from England? Do we look British to... you..." His voice trailed off as he realized what he had said. "How do you know about England?"

This wasn't good. John unclipped his P-90 and dropped to his knees to shimmy up the last rock outcropping between him and his teammates. The voices rose as he peeked over the rise, gun ready.

Teyla stood in front of Rodney, facing towards John, but between John and his friends was a ragged group of six people. They were a disparate grouping, three older men, one child with longish hair, and two women, one older, one about Teyla's age. All faced Teyla and Rodney, but the immediate danger was the older man in the front of the group.

He had a wand out and aimed at Teyla's heart.

John drew a bead on the man's back with his gun. Could he squeeze off a shot before the wizard tried to harm Teyla?

"You must have come through the arch," the man was saying, in a rough voice that couldn't quite mask his British accent. The familiarity of that voice gnawed at John's head, but he pushed that away. It had to be a trick of his ears. "Did you come through the Ministry in London? Do you have news of Voldemort?"

The man knew of Voldemort. A horrible idea occurred to John, a way to shock the man into putting his wand down long enough to get Teyla and Rodney out of danger. Everyone always said John looked just like his father. The man down there looked about the same age as James Potter would have been, had he lived. Maybe John could pull a trick on the man, without even using magic.

John spoke into the open channel. "Ronon, if this doesn't work, stun anyone who points a stick like that at anyone." With that, he carefully rose to his feet, gun aimed at the wizard's back. Here goes nothing.

Putting on his best British accent, and hoping the spell on his voice didn't screw this up, John said, "Put the wand down, now!"

To a man, the group whirled around, but John only had eyes for the wizard with the wand. The man turned, bringing his wand around and pointing it at John. Then his face went blank with shock. "James?" he said incredulously.

John almost fired his gun in surprise. Even though the man was older, greyer, there was no mistaking that man.

Sirius Black.

continue to part 4

Comments

[jaydeyn-sitari.livejournal.com]

*runs around in glee*

SIRIUS!

oh... and... The power reside on these ruins seems indicative that there was a massive nuclear power source present within the last thousand years."

residue?

YAY SIRIUS!
:)
Jaydeyn

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

I told you John would have some serious problems :D

Thanks for the word thingy :)

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

Squeeee!

Before I head to the last part, one word missing from this sentence:
Like step behind the veil to see if I can get back to London.

And away!...

[kaylashay81]

You did it... *grin*

Ancient Blood 3

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, oh! I have read this entire fic before. I absolutely *adore* it! I would love to see a sequel!

Manic

[kyizi.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEEEE! Sirius!!!