Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.

A/N: Wow! 23 reviews and one little shit for the first chapter! Thanks to everyone who was nice. To the other guy, get over yourself, baby, and learn how to spell. ^_~

Well, on with the show.

Dr. Daniel Jackson had entrenched himself inside a small ancient temple in Thebes, trying to find a clarifying reference that would make sense of the story on its walls. He'd never seen a reference to this son of Osiris and Isis anywhere else, and he wondered if it was because that Goa'uld had been left on Earth, as Seth had been. Meneris had no presence throughout history like Seth, but neither was there any Tok'ra record of him. It was possible that he was simply an invention of the historians, but that was rather unlikely given the fact that every deity in the Egyptian pantheon had so far been either a System Lord or one of their descendants.

The story went that Meneris had abandoned his human form and taken that of Ra's pet bird, a phoenix. The bird was also called Khafre, and Daniel thought that was probably the host's name. Being immortal, the bird was a stronger form for Meneris, and he made a nuisance of himself for a thousand years after Ra "left Egypt in the hands of his son, Horus," Horus being the first Pharaoh. In other words, after the Goa'uld were kicked off Earth in the uprising.

Finally, a magician named Fhadentep made a pact with the phoenix, who then gave up his role as a god and aided the magician and his family for the rest of the man's life. There was no mention of what happened to Khafre after Fhadentep's death.

To Daniel, it sounded as though the Goa'uld had somehow been forced from the body of its host without killing it. Daniel desperately wanted to know how that had been done, and he'd convinced General Hammond to give him the time to study the temple for any hint of where to begin. If someone in ancient Egypt had really removed the symbiote without harming the host, and if they'd left notes on how it had been done, then that was something that the SGC needed to know about. It would certainly make Stargate explorations safer, and it offered Daniel hope that he would one day be able to liberate Sha're from Amonet.

"Hello?" Daniel was so focused on the walls of the temple that he didn't notice the pair of men who came in behind him. So when the British voice issued from behind him he nearly jumped out of his skin. "Whoa, there, Danny. Had a bit too much of that Yank coffee?"

Daniel grinned, recognizing the voice. "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Bill." He stood from where he'd been crouched against the carvings on the wall to shake his old friend's hand.

Bill Weasley was a tall, red-headed man with a wolf-fang earring nestled in one ear and his titan locks gathered into a tail at the nape of his neck. Back when Daniel had still been a working archaeologist, Bill had been doing some graduate work on Egyptian mythology, and he'd been a fairly constant presence around the various digs. A lot of diggers swore he was a good luck charm, as no one ever had a cave in or other such mishap when he was around. He tended to make fun of Daniel's addiction to coffee, for which he was well known. He grinned at Daniel. "When did you get back into Egypt? Last I heard you'd left to promote your work."

The linguist smiled ruefully. "That didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, I'm afraid. I've been using my language skills on behalf of the US government. Pays the bills with plenty to spare, and I still get to indulge in my 'hobby'."

"Sounds boring."

"Anything but. but it's kind of -- um -- sensitive."

Bill held up a hand. "Say no more. None of my business. Can't help but be nosy, you know me. I got that from my Dad."

"Thanks, Bill. So, who's your young friend?" Daniel indicated the dark-haired, bespectacled youth beside him. The round glasses hid intelligent green eyes that betrayed a bit of nervousness and little else.

"Oh, sorry! Daniel, this is Harry Potter. Harry, Dr. Daniel Jackson. Harry's got something of an interest in the more obscure parts of Egyptian mythology."

Harry shrugged and spoke for the first time. "I like a good mystery."

"Well, this is the place for you then. You two want to help me with this little puzzle? I've never found or heard of anything like it in all of Egyptian antiquity. It's about a god named Meneris." He went over the story with the two Brits, leaving out his own speculation about the Goa'uld, of course. "I'm looking for any other mentions of him in the temple. It's a small building, but I've only covered these two walls so far. I hope to assemble as complete a recording of this story as I can."

Harry and Bill looked at each other, then back at Daniel. Bill said, "We'll help."

Three hours later, all three men were hot and tired, and Harry was seriously wishing that he dared to use a cooling charm in front of the Muggle archeologist. Still, the man was obviously a genius in his field, and he had already pointed out three other avenues that Harry wanted to check out later.

The wizards of ancient Egypt had been just as brilliant as the architects and physicians. Wards and curses existed from those times that not even the strongest wizards could break, even three to five thousand years after they'd been cast. The famous curse of Tutankhamun's tomb had been a rather minor one, actually, but the curse beakers from Gringott's missed it because of the Boy King's previous obscurity. There were far stronger and deadlier spells hidden in the sands.

That was why Harry and Bill were here. This was a research trip, and they hoped to find a book or some papyrus scrolls that detailed some of these ancient magical works. The hope was to put them on key buildings, such as Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, to protect them from Death Eaters. Voldemort had nearly gathered all the strength he needed for his army and Harry wanted to hide every Muggle-born, wizard and squib under the age of seventeen in Great Britain in the vast network of tunnels that connected to the Chamber of Secrets, then ward it so strongly that all of Voldemort's armies wouldn't be able to breach it. Egypt held the only hope for finding wards that strong.

The heat was sapping Harry's energy. He leaned against one of the temple walls for a moment to rest. He brushed the hair and sweat out of his eyes, briefly revealing his curse scar.

Daniel, who was also taking a brief break, tossed Harry a water bottle out of his cooler. It was ice cold, and he gratefully pressed the plastic against his forehead, then the back of his neck, before opening it and taking a heaven-sent drink. The linguist handed one to Bill as well and took one for himself before closing the cooler and preserving the ice inside.

Daniel took a drink, then asked, "How'd you get that scar, if it's not too personal?"

Harry shrugged. "I got it when my parents were killed. I was only a baby, so I don't remember that well." It was half true, anyway. He didn't remember unless the Dementors were around, but that was on purpose. He didn't want to remember that night, so he'd shoved it behind an Occulmensy wall that hid it even from himself.

Daniel flinched. "Sorry. Jack always says I'm too nosy for my own damned good."

Harry smiled a little. "I'd imagine it comes with the territory, being an archaeologist."

Daniel grinned. "Yeah, pretty much."

The three men continued to work until the setting sun allowed the desert to start cooling. They probably would have continued, but a man in a black tee-shirt and blue jeans came in looking for Daniel. "Hey Danny!"

Absently the scientist answered, "Yeah, Jack," never once taking his eyes from the wall in front of him.

"Were you and your friends planning on eating today, or should Sam and Murray come help me lock you in with the rest of the mummies?"

"Yeah, Jack, sure."

Harry wasn't nearly so intent on his studies and burst out laughing. Bill just grinned, and Jack shook his head at Daniel, who had looked up at Harry's laughter. "Come on, Indy. Chow's on."

Daniel grinned sheepishly. "I did the zone out thing, didn't I."

Bill cheerfully said, "Yep! Totally gone."

"You know, you don't have to agree with me so readily, Weasley." Daniel stood up straight with some difficulty and stretched his abused limbs and back. "Do you guys have any where in particular to eat?"

Harry answered, "Yeah. My girlfriend, Ginny, is waiting for us back at our campsite. She'll be pissed if we don't go back there, but maybe tomorrow we can all get together? This place is really fascinating."

Jack said, "Ginny. Average height, hazel eyes, hair 'bout as red as this guy's?" indicating Bill. Harry agreed, wondering what was going on. "Sam already invited her over to our camp for the evening. She said, and I quote, 'I'm tired of only having testosterone for company.'"

Harry grinned. The youngest Weasley was more than used to having only males for company, having grown up with six elder brothers, so given the chance at having a female buffer, she was taking it enthusiastically.

Bill chuckled. "That's my little sis. Poor girl. And poor Harry! After all, having grown up with us six boys, she knew exactly how to trap a man in his own mind."

They left the temple and took Jack up on his offer to drive them over in his Jeep rather than walk through the increasingly cold desert to the camp. Daniel and Bill got into a discussion about the relevance of Meneris to the Egyptian pantheon. Harry thought about how the son of Osiris seemed to be a threat when refered to as Meneris, but as a friend or maybe even victim when called Khafre. Was this dichotomy a result of his personality change or were there truly two phoenixes rather than only one?

Harry knew that he would need to examine that wall again tomorrow. He had sensed the presence of ancient magic permeating through a small section. He suspected that the wall was hiding something of great importance, though what that could be, he had no clue. There was a strange curse written in that section, and he wanted to talk to Bill before doing anything about it. He had copied the symbols down perfectly and decided he would get Daniel to help him translate it. He knew it to be a curse of some kind, just by the feel of the magic around it, but he couldn't read the hieratic very well. All he got was something about darkness and warning.

Ginny and a short-haired blonde woman were laughing about something, sitting next to a campfire. A large black man stood next to another Jeep and was unloading something from the back of it. Jack pulled up beside the other Jeep and cut the engine. Harry jumped out and walked over to Ginny, putting a quick peck on her forehead. She smiled up at him and said, "Hi. I see you and the guys have met?"

"Yeah. Daniel was working in the same temple that we were." He set down beside her and grinned. "So, what was so funny?"

Ginny blushed. "Oh, nothing. Harry, this is Samantha Carter. Sam, Harry Potter."

Harry shook the woman's hand. "Pleased to meet you. Any chance I can get the topic of conversation from you? By Gin's reaction, I'm betting it's a good one."

"Beyond 'relationships', it's classified to anyone with a Y chromosome."

Daniel chuckled. "Forget it, Harry. She's the most stubborn woman I know. That and she was trained not to reveal information under torture."

Harry pouted a little, but then he returned the grin. "Yeah, but Gin's not." And with that he pounced on his girlfriend and started tickling her sensitive waist.

They passed the evening in conversation, both groups having secrets that had to be kept from the others, but being able to easily avoid those areas. Basically they stuck to Bill and Daniel's history in Egypt and the puzzle of the little temple they were trying to solve. Harry said, "I managed to copy this tile, but I'm not nearly as good at translating the hieratic as I am the hieroglyphs and I thought you should give it a crack." Then he handed it to Daniel.

The archaeologist could read Egyptian hieratic as easily as English. "Yeah." He quickly scanned the diligent copy Harry had made. Suddenly his eyes widened, the blood drained from his face and a flash of fear dancing across his face. "Shit."

Harry frowned. "What is it?"

He looked up as if he had forgotten that anyone else was there. He looked at Jack, then just decided to go with it. The two Britons couldn't know what it meant. "'Here lies a living darkness, not a dead shell. Only in the darkest of days will this bring light to the world, and only the brightest light in this world may wield it without harm. Any other will surely perish, and be unable to pass on, forced to witness the darkness that their shell will bring upon the earth. Be warned, lest you bring about the end of all you hold dear.'"

Harry blinked. That wasn't a curse. It was a warning, a prophesy. The "darkest days" might very well refer to the present, though, with Voldemort a very real threat. But then, where was this "brightest light"?

So intent on those thoughts was Harry that he didn't notice the look on the other three Americans' faces. But Bill did. Their faces had hardened in a very familiar way, like Aurors who had learned of a particularly nasty Death Eater raid, scared and determined not to let it pass unchallenged. "Okay, so what's scary about a seven thousand year old inscription to three trained military personnel and one archeologist?"

Daniel shook his head. "We can't tell you. The stuff I work on is so classified that you almost have to get written authorization to visit the head. I can tell you that this just got a hell of a lot more interesting, though. And dangerous."

Jack said, "I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to go back in there until we can get some safety equipment in here."

"All right. Is it dangerous as it stands?" Bill didn't want to jeopardize any lives, but they needed the research they were working on. Lives back home depended on it.

Daniel shook his head. "No. As long as we stay away from that tile, we'll be perfectly safe in there. But watch your step and where you put your hands. You know how fond some of these builders were of traps. Not as bad as the South American builders, but close."

Bill and Harry both agreed to be cautious and to avoid the tile when they went back the next morning, but nothing was said about tonight, as the Americans assumed everyone would be asleep.

The darkness was still as Harry crept back to the temple, something in the back of his mind egging him on to reexamine the cryptic message that had been left behind by the ancient wizard who had built the place. The whole structure was designed to contain something, and if that something was a weapon, then hopefully it could be used against Voldemort.

He looked carefully at the tile, scanning it to find any curses that might be protecting it. There were three of them, neither alone very difficult to break, but together more than enough to kill anyone who tried to break in. Daniel hadn't known how right he was about Egyptian builders. Often the wizards and the priests would work together and rig multiple traps that worked both on mechanism and magic. The intricacies were brilliant, and they made some Egyptian tombs among the hardest safes to crack in all the world. But this one held only magical protections, and they were things which Harry could deal without needing Bill's help.

He dismantled the first two curses, but frowned before tackling the third. It had a very distinct magical signature on it, one he had met before. What in the world did Fawkes have to do with this? He hesitated, not really wanting to loose whatever the phoenix was so determined to keep hidden, but knowing that they needed any advantage in this war they could get.

With a silent apology to the bird, he slid his magic into the lattice-work of the curse and snapped it like so many twigs. The tile glowed brightly as the magic dissipated, then fell to the floor, leaving open a tiny chamber in the wall.

"Lumos." The temple was brightened with the light of his wand, but only for a moment as something leapt out of the compartment at Harry's face. He dropped his wand at the pain that radiated from the base of his skull and screamed. Then he passed out.

Aren't I evil, leaving this here? Well, now that I've proven I'm not dead, I'll explain my long absence. I got married, and anyone who's ever had to plan a wedding knows just how hectic that can get. I've never forgotten my work, but now I'm trying to catch up on ALL of it at once, and it's proving a daunting challenge. Oz should be the next update, followed by the first chapter of AAB: The Heir of Slytherin. Reviews are welcome, as always!