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"You have to understand," she said, plopping a book down onto the table in front of him, exploding a cloud of dust into his face, "that everything you're about to read is being told to you in utmost secrecy."
He sneezed three times, then gave her a level stare. "Professor Granger, with all due respect, I work for the military," he reminded her.
She stared back. "With all due respect, Dr. Jackson, that's precisely my point."
"Look," he said, "I appreciate your concerns, I do. But I don't have to remind you that it's you who came to me for help."
"Help is...a strong word," she hedged. "And what we're looking for is really not so much you as - "
"The ancients, right," Daniel finished. "And if you'd rather sit back and wait for one of 'your kind' who reads their language to show up, then I'll be perfectly happy to return home and wish you the best of luck with this...unspecified threat you guys are facing. But if what you're looking for is one of the foremost experts on their technology on this planet, well." He leaned back and shrugged. "You've got him."
Hermione gave him a withering look. "Have you always been this arrogant?" she asked him.
He rubbed his nose under his glasses. "Years of long practice under the tutelage of Colonel Jack O'Neill."
"No doubt a charming man," Hermione said dryly.
"As charming as they come," Daniel replied in a matching tone. He leaned forward then, and tapped the cover of the book lightly. "Do you mind if I - ?"
She stood there for a moment, looking at him, then settled down across from him, placing her palm over the cover of the book. "Not yet," she said. "First, there are some things you need to know."
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"Daniel." Her voice was barely a whisper, but echoed in the empty room.
"Hmph?" He didn't quite bother to pick up his head, just adjusting enough so his glasses weren't digging into the side of his face anymore.
When she settled into the seat across from him, her face was tight, worried. She absently pushed a mug full of coffee towards him. "Are you having any luck?"
He sighed and reached for the coffee. "I'm..." he looked down at the notes scribbled across the pages and books littering his desk, the boards full of figures and diagrams around him. "Some, yeah. Not enough." He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, bewitched to give him a false sense of belonging somewhere. "How's the outside world?"
She flinched. "You're not a prisoner, Daniel."
"No," he agreed. "I can leave any time I want." He looked at her challengingly, long enough to see her cheeks color. "Right." He turned to his notes and shuffled a few towards her. "There are patterns emerging," he said. "Surges of Dark Magic in direct correlation to events that my agency has dealt with, spikes of energy in places that you've been keeping an eye on. There's something. And I'm almost..." He looked past her, at one of the boards. "I need more time."
Her face was drawn as she stood. "Time," she told him, "is something we don't have much of."
He dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his hair. "You're wizards," he said, "you can't just manufacture some time?"
There was a wry twist to her smile as she replied. "There was a day when we could," she said, then sobered. "But it's not today." She nodded towards the coffee. "Sugar?"
"I'm fine," he said shortly.
She sighed. "Daniel..."
He waved a hand at her. "I'm fine." He looked down at one of his books and waited for the sound of her heading towards the door, then looked up again. "Professor?"
"You certainly know how to make a lady feel like she's eight thousand and three," Hermione said.
He smiled thinly. "Hermione," he corrected himself. He tilted one of the books towards her. "Look, I know you've got a lot going on, but there's a lot of goblin writing in this one, and..." he smiled a little. "My goblin's kind of rusty?"
The corner of her lip twitched up. "Seeing as how you didn't know it existed before we brought you here, 'rusty' is quite impressive."
"Still," he said, "I could use a hand."
She paused, looked at her hand where a wristwatch should be, and nodded. She settled into the seat beside him, peering over his shoulder at the half-transcribed notes he offered, and as she leaned over the pages to scribble at them like a logic problem, he watched years of worry melt from her face.
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"It's sunny," Daniel said. He was tilted back in his chair, looking at the ceiling instead of at her. "I feel like I haven't seen the sun in years."
"Months," she corrected him absently.
"Same thing." His eyes shifted towards her and he slowly tipped back upright. "So that's it, then."
"That's it," she agreed.
"Kind of anticlimactic."
"For you, maybe," she said, halfway between humor and bitterness.
"Not the first time I've had to sit out a fight, I guess. Probably won't be the last." He looked her up and down. "Glad to see you in one piece."
"Mostly thanks to you," she replied, only a little stiffly.
He stood up and stretched. "Nah," he said. "If you're anything to go on, the wizarding world's full of badasses that the people I work with wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley." He smiled a little. "Although Sam might give you a run for your money." He walked closer to her, watching the way her fingers tightened on the wand she thought he couldn't see. "It's okay," he told her quietly.
Her brow furrowed. "I don't - " she said.
"Hermione. I'm fine." He leaned in and brushed her cheek with his lips. "Just - " He closed his eyes, but not before he saw that she had too.
"Obliviate."