Goa'uld Supreme System Lord Ra relaxed- feeling rather pleased with his latest victory, on his solid gold throne strewn with the finest silks for comfort. His military dominance had been proven once again, and better yet, he'd discovered an entire planet to re-conquer. All in a days work.

It was good to be a god.

"Enter hyperspace," he ordered his First Prime Ah'men. His Jaffa bowed low in reverence before turning to do just that.

"Head for the Tau'ri's home planet."

He could feel his excitement rising – a new(ish), lush, world – his for the taking. An excellent addition to his empire, by the time he'd finished he'd have a very wealthy world indeed to brag about at the next System Lord meeting. Subtly brag, that was, too much would invite trouble. He didn't want to rouse their curiosity and let them discover the Tau'ri's home world for themselves.

He hated poaching.

Not to mention that he'd finally get his revenge on the world that dared to rebel; he'd not forgotten the vile place over the millennia – but getting back to it was another matter entirely. The only reason he hadn't already crushed them beneath his heel was due to sheer luck on their part.

The rebels had buried the Chappa'ai, in their astounding ignorance they believed that that could actually stop his wrath. If Ra had had a Hak'tar to spare… Ra would have firmly instructed them otherwise. As it was…Ra scowled. He didn't like to think about how they'd succeeded, even if it was only due to his own weakness rather than their strength.

Without the Chappa'ai, the planet had been lost, much as Ra had hated to admit it, even to himself. Ra's host had been dying when he'd first stumbled onto the lush world's coordinates – abandoning his Unas host due to injury and by sheer desperate chance, discovering that the native species, the Tau'ri could serve as hosts indefinitely.

He had not known the physical coordinates of the planet upon arriving, courtesy of arriving by Chappa'ai, nor had he learned them during his long reign there. Ra was a System Lord – he didn't have the time or ships to search the galaxy the slow way for a single planet when he had an entire universe of scheming relatives to control and shepherd.

But the Chappa'ai had been unsealed.

Better, the Tau'ri had activated it and then walked through. If it hadn't turned out to be so useful to him, Ra would have scoffed at the sheer ignorance they'd displayed just by empowering the Chappa'ai. They were like infants, stumbling around on hands and knees in the dark.

That planet – Earth they now called it; Dirt would have been just as fitting – had no chance against him this time. It had grown a great deal in his absence, Ra acknowledged, if only in the privacy of his mind, but it would not be enough. It would be a simple matter to re-educate the populace. He took a firm grip upon the arms of his throne as he unconsciously prepared for the hyper-lurch.

Conquering Earth would be an excellent distraction from the normal squabbling amongst his own people. A new world – particularly if it was as large as he remembered – would be much appreciated in his empire. He always needed more resources.

The engines began to whine and Ra braced himself for launch; it was ungodly to show normal weaknesses such as clumsiness in front of his Jaffa. Gods were above such things. If these last few millennia had taught him anything it was that appearance was everything. Particularly when –

- A noise.

Ra glanced over – the Transporter Rings were activating. All of his Jaffa were accounted for, what –

His memory was excellent. He could hardly forget the primitive weapon he'd enriched. But he'd already –

heatpainHEATPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN.

Everything went black.

#

Harry James Potter lay on the floor of the ramshackle hut on the rock his relations had fled to, shivering under his excuse for a blanket and wishing for a life where no one could tell him what to do again. A life where he could read his own post, have the best blanket, a real bed, and enough food that he wouldn't remember what it was like to be hungry ever again.

He sighed silently; it was useless to dream. Life was not fair – as he well knew.

It was only early evening, but for a lack of anything better to do, the Dursleys had all turned in early. Naturally, they had had no trouble falling asleep after the harried day of travelling. Just as naturally, Harry wasn't one of them. The storm had come in too early for that – now it raged loud and violent and Harry was too concerned about the questionable roof falling down to drift off to sleep.

Instead he lay there, feeling stiffer and colder by the minute, listening to Dudley's snores and slowly being bruised by the uneven floor. If he used just a little imagination, it wasn't too difficult to trick himself into believing a pig was in the room. Not that it would surprise him if the Dursley's valued a random pig over Harry himself anyway – they certainly liked their bacon enough to let one take the sofa.

Imaging Dudley's features on a round pink face was at least mildly entertaining enough to pass the time. It was that or dust art.

The roof shuddered. Harry's image of Dudley with a pig's snout vanished as he concentrated on the flaking ceiling. That had not been thunder. Harry sat up, listening harder.

Was that a voice?

Curious as a cat, Harry stood.

Dudley had thrown a blanket off as he tossed and turned – and Harry had no compunctions about requisitioning it for himself, he left the thicker one on his patch of floor and took the thinner one, wrapped it about himself like a shawl– it was belting it down out there after all - and started a slow shuffle towards the door.

Sneaking was an ability he'd long since cultivated, not that he would need any skill with the cover the furious storm provided, so Harry was as quiet as a mouse as he approached the door, listening intently.

Yes, yes that was definitely a voice out there. Mildly concerned about who could be mad enough to go outside in weather like this, and bored enough to go and look, Harry eased the door open and slipped outside. Perhaps it was a very irritated postman with an entire ship of letters for him!

A single step outside and he was drenched. The rain was pouring down like a second ocean. The waves came so high that they splashed the ground just a few feet in front of him with every swell. Harry peered out into the dark, shivering.

Nothing.

Irritated that he was now wet and still bored, without a mysterious letter to boot, Harry began to turn back – but then a fork of lightening tore the sky apart and the flash of blazing light revealed a shape hunched over the rock.

A very small shape… a snake!

Harry liked snakes. They talked to him. Perhaps the boa from the zoo had found him? What a birthday that would make!

Harry crossed the slippery rock with all the grace of a child, falling head over heels and landing on his rear, nearly squashing the poor thing.

It was not the boa, unfortunately.

"Hello, what are you doing here?" Harry asked, "Aren't you cold?"

#

Ra felt his body slowing, fatally, as the vicious cold set in.

Everything hurt.

He had no clue what had happened, one moment he was upon his main vessel, triumphant, and then there was a searing explosion of heat like he had never known before and immense agony. It was all he could do to drag his aching body out from his dead host.

His host was practically burned to a cinder, instant death from the explosion or the snapped neck – Ra wasn't sure which, it had happened far too quickly for him to register anything but the pain.

It was difficult to unwind himself from a snapped spinal cord, Ra had to move carefully; the last thing he could afford was to get stuck and cooked flesh was tougher to chew a path through, even tougher when it was basically charcoal.

The ship had to have exploded, utterly destroyed, Ra knew. The throne room was the safest place on the vessel, protected by layered shields and multiple reinforced walls. If his host had actually died – nothing of the ship could be left except scraps.

Ra eased himself from the corpse – and was instantly drenched by rain.

That couldn't be good.

Ra looked around himself carefully, fully extended his ruff to sense his surroundings in exquisite detail.

The first things he saw were the bodies. His Horus Guards surrounded him in a tight circle of rapidly cooling corpses. They must have tried to protect him. Their instincts had apparently been quicker than his, Ra frowned, vexed with himself. That was not the behaviour of a god. God's knew events before others, not the other way around. Still, he was grateful for their reflexes.

Their loyalty would not be forgotten. The Tau'ri would pay dearly –and it must have been the Tau'ri. How they'd gotten their hands on the weapon he'd launched through the Stargate, Ra didn't know. Grudgingly, he admired the cunningness of their plan. His sensors would have easily detected and disabled any weapon they could have fired at the ship directly. It was clever to use his transportation system against him. The potency of the weapon was Ra's fault. He'd enhanced the primitive bomb with Naquadah.

They had gotten lucky. Once again it was Ra's weakness not the Tau'ri's strength to have almost defeated him.

Ra despised that. What was the point of his endless preparation? The sheer amount of resources put into development if luck would win the day? If luck could bring down his best ship, his most loyal warriors…

It wasn't right. He was a god. The world bowed to him, not he to it.

His First Prime, Ah'men had been with him for millennia– he forgot the exact dates. It was before the tradition of using molten gold upon the brow to identify their servants – Ra remembered that much. Now Ah'men was gone and for the first time in a very long time, Ra was alone – and he certainly hadn't fallen back down to Abydos.

Abydos didn't have this great mass of water. Abydos had no sea; it was a desert planet, left as such as a reminder of Ra's beginnings on the Tau'ri home planet of Earth.

Abydos was not so cold either.

Without the shielding of his host, Ra was very cold indeed. But there was no living Jaffa in sight – in fact, Ra realised, panicked, there wasn't anything in sight.

He had emerged from his host and wriggled up on top of his deceased Jaffa, who lay on top of the remains of his ship – which was swiftly sinking into the ocean.

The storm was almost certainly due to his ship's crash landing, and it wouldn't die down until the upper atmosphere had calmed. Ra had little time before his only protection sank under the assault of the enormous waves and he was at the mercy of the cold, deep, sea.

This was not how he would die.

Ra raised his body as high as it could go, then he cringed, curling into himself in a wince of pain as his body informed him that whilst he was alive, he was by no means uninjured.

No rival Goa'uld could see him like this. It would be suicide. He had to rely on himself alone to get out of this mess.

Ra forced his body to rise once more, his ruff flaring as he tried to detect anything useful.

A scent.

Something foul blew in with the next wave faint enough to only be noticeable since it wasn't salt salt and more salt that currently overpowered his senses. Ra twisted himself to face the stench even as he snapped his jaws horizontally in distaste, his tongue curling in disgust as it registered the scent.

Burning plastic.

So this world he had fallen to was more developed than he usually allowed but not enough to be dangerous. Probably not held by a rival Goa'uld, so he was at least somewhere relatively safe where he could recover from his injuries. Plastic required a good level of technological development – burning it said that the planet was not developed enough to care about the risks, and that they hadn't discovered more useful materials. It was a fairly good indicator of their level.

Ra took one last look about him – everyone was dead, there was nothing he could salvage here – then he orientated his thin body into the direction of that reek and launched himself into the cold water.

It. Was. Freezing.

Gods did not die.

Ra struggled against the waves, sometimes they helped to propel him forward, and sometimes they nearly drowned him. And he had to writhe and push his way back to the surface. His energy was fading fast. Only sheer will to live kept him slithering through the stinging water. His scales were rigid with burns, and he felt as if he too had nearly been cooked in his skin. His muscles protested with every gyration, Ra knew he was in a bad way – it was going to take a lot of time to recover without a sarcophagus.

Burning plastic meant fire. Where there was fire there was a host. A host meant healing, it meant warmth it meant life. Shortly followed by revenge on the Tau'ri, naturally. It was a mantra Ra repeated again and again to drive him against the relentless waves and propel him ever onward. Host host host host host.

The wooden hut appeared slowly – this was a primitive world then, good. Ra turned slightly, flaring his ruff to help him judge the distance and force of the waves behind him, then turned again to sense the height of the island's land, extending his tongue to test the air.

Slithering backwards by half his length, Ra braced.

The next wave picked him up and launched him upwards onto the rock. Hard.

Pain.

Ra screamed as his burned and battered body smacked into the rock head on.

Thousand of years of experience made him curl his tail firmly around a prominent rock, despite the agony, before another malignant wave – vicious things- could drag him back into the deeps and keep him there.

Slowly, cursing aloud with every scale of progress up the blasted rock, Ra hauled himself onto solid ground at last.

He was exhausted, his energy spent.

This was the end.

"I will not die here!" he screamed defiance to the world. "I am a god! I am Ra!"

He didn't know whom he expected to convince, but Ra couldn't fade silently into the black. That was not who he was.

He curled about himself, trying to preserve warmth no matter how hopeless it was, even that movement strained his burned and bruised flesh almost beyond what he could endure.

"Hello, what are you doing here?" a voice asked, "Aren't you cold?"

Ra looked up.

A host!

It was a child, a particularly thin and scrawny one at that – he couldn't be more than eight seasons old – but a host was a host!

"What type of snake are you? I've never seen one who has a sideways mouth." His Future-Host asked.

Ra simmered with fury. He knew his Future-Host was referring to a mere animal. Anger gave him warmth – he reared up to his full height, powered by righteous wrath.

"I am no mere snake!" He proclaimed in his most godly voice, " I am Ra!"

"Your name is Ra?" The boy continued mindlessly, "It's nice to meet you Ra."

Ra grimaced, and began reviewing everything he remembered about healing hosts who had mental issues. He knew the chemistry was very fragile in that organ and had little practice dealing with it. One mistake and his host might die.

He'd hold the healing then, he'd skip to finding a new, sane, host, who was beautiful, strong, and worthy of Ra.

Then it occurred to Ra that Future-Host was talking to him in his true form. How was that possible? Telepathy was the only way Ra knew… the boy might not be a boy after all. He had to be cautious.

"How do you talk to me in this form, human?" Ra asked. If the boy was not fully human… possessing him might not be quite so beneficial to him. Or the boy could simply be more evolved in which case Ra had to have him.

The Maybe-Boy shrugged. "I just do. It's probably because I am a freak."

"What is a Freak?" Ra asked. Was it a species? The boy looked human, but maybe he was only half? He could probably manage to possess a half-human being. The genetics couldn't be too far away from the standard if the chid had the typical physiology of a human.

"Me, I suppose." The boy replied easily – oblivious to how the answer infuriated Ra, was he being so dim-witted on purpose? "Are you a water-snake or something? Why are you out here tonight? I don't think there are any mice here."

"I am not a snake!" Ra insisted, offended. "I am a god! My ship crashed, my host died, I swam here, but I am wounded, I can not hear you very well, dear child, bring me closer to your lips so that I might hear you properly."

"Oh no!" The Maybe-Boy-Maybe-Freak gasped, "Are you alright? Do you want to come inside?"

"Yes. Yes, inside where it is warm so that we may speak properly. You must tell me more of these Freaks."

The child picked him up – carefully, Ra noted, the boy must be in awe of his godly presence – and drew him close to the warmth of his body.

Not that it was very warm. The child was clothed in some vermin-pecked cloth that was barely staying on his hollow bones, and that only because the sheeting rain plastered it to his form like a second skin rather than the strength of the material.

Inside the hut was little better, but at least the rain was no longer assaulting him, and the furious winds of the storm were a little softer.

The child laid him with great respect onto a mound of warmth that Ra luxuriated in, even if the method was beneath his godly status. It must be some beast of burden; Ra knew those were often kept inside with the slaves, as the child exchanged his wet robe for a dry one. Ah, a blanket, not a robe. The boy was in better-fitted clothes underneath. Those clothes were dyed and engraved, proving Ra to be correct upon the technological level of this world.

He did so like to be right.

The vermin-pecked material was hung up in front of a fireplace – upon which lay shrivelled blackened material – the stench that had drawn Ra here.

No wonder they tried burning plastic if this was all they had. It was a very poor place indeed. Even Abydos had more wealth.

"Sorry about that, but my Aunt will freak if she knows that I've been outside."

"Your Aunt is also a Freak?" Ra asked, pleased that the topic was raised without his effort. So it was genetic.

"No, I meant that she would get angry."

The boy made little sense. Did Freaks rage? Was that the source of their power? Some sort of berserker? But how did that tie in with speaking to the Goa'uld? Ra took a moment to consider it – then stopped. He would know all as soon as he took possession of his host's mind.

"You have aided," – not rescued, never rescued – "A god. Your aunt will reward you." Ra assured easily.

"My aunt doesn't like snakes."

"I'm not a snake."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not, I am a god!" Ra persisted. How much damage was he supposed to heal in this one? How much damage could a human mind take yet still walk and talk?

"You look like a snake, you talk like a snake, so of course you're a snake. What did your owner on the boat call you?"

Ra writhed in fury, hating most of all how weak his body was, he could barely slither. "I am a god! Look here, little one, look at my neck, do you see my ruff. I am an ancient and wise Goa'uld. Ra."

The boy leaned close, curious, "I don't under—"

With the last of his strength, Ra launched himself into the open mouth of the child; victorious at last as he sank his teeth into the soft flesh of the throat and writhed inside, finally warm.

#

Harry lifted the snake carefully – mindful of it's injuries. By the sounds of it, here was another zoo escapee; Harry was beginning to see a pattern.

At least talking to a deluded snake was more interesting than listening to Dudley snore – though those would be screams if he woke up and found a snake on him, which Harry well knew even as he deposited the creature onto his cousin – gently, so as not to wake Dudley. He liked his petty revenges, but he wasn't suicidal just yet.

He hung the blanket to dry by the fireplace – not that his Uncle had actually managed to get a fire going with crisp packets. Petunia would not be happy to know that he'd gone outside. Although she'd probably show more concern about the state of the blanket.

What Ra expected him to see, Harry didn't know. Perhaps Ra had some special markings?

He didn't find out.

As soon as he opened his mouth to ask what he was supposed to be looking for – Ra leapt into it!

Disgusted, Harry flailed backwards…

#

Ra flexed in relief. All his wounds were soothed by the presence of a host. The warmth eased him down to his tail, nourishment poured into him once more. Despite the half-human heritage, the physical state of the boy was no different to a normal human, and Ra curled up around the spine and nudged his head up into the brain without difficulty.

His host was flailing.

Before the boy could cause any more trouble – and before the Freak side could emerge, Ra released the usual strain of chemicals into the mind, and exerted his telepathic influence with the all the mental might he could muster.

The boy had a shield.

How unusual Ra thought as he strained a little against its smooth walls. Well it was no matter, he'd encountered many different species in is millennia, a mental shield wasn't an obstacle to him – he just needed to push – just a little more –

-and something cruel, something strong, something more pushed back. Hard.

#

Alerted by Harry's panic, something sinister awoke, deep inside Harry's very being.

Something was wrong.

It was not the violent muggle, it knew, for it could sense no physical harm in his child that he would have to struggle to repair. It was something old. Something cruel.

Something attacked his mind! His Occlumency shields were being targeted! That meant Legilimency, and that particular branch of mind magic almost certainly meant Dumbledore.

No! It raged. That man would take northing more from him!

Voldemort gathered his stolen magic and struck back with ruthless efficiency and might, his attack as fatally vicious as he could make it. Dumbledore was a fool to challenge him mind-to-mind, they both knew who had the superior talent here, but Voldemort couldn't let this chance pass for revenge.

#

Ra screamed as the counterattack speared his telepathic presence with creative brutality.

This must be the Freak.

Ra wouldn't allow it to win! He was a god! He was Ra! If the Freak won here… Ra would die.

#

Voldemort raged.

How dare this invader call him a freak! He was a Dark Lord! He was immortal.

The invader was clearly not Dumbledore; it was too old for that. The area where memories were stored was too vast for a human, Voldemort noted as he caught a glimpse inside with his next attack. This thing was ancient– not that it mattered! Once it was dead, those memories were Voldemort's to explore at leisure.

This host was weak – there was only room for one!

#

Harry slumped to the floor in a daze, his emerald green eyes utterly vacant as his attention focused inwards.

His mind was… waging war… against itself. But not itself. That would imply there were more of him, there wasn't, there was only one him, but there was a them and another them. Harry didn't like it or them.

He was Ra! He was a god! He would survive! He would conquer! He was ancient!

No.

He was Voldemort! He was the Dark Lord! He was immortal! He would not be conquered!

No.

He was Harry James Potter! He was his, himself and no other. A great tidal wave of golden light rose up behind Harry as he fought for his very soul.

The new power was overwhelming to all of them. It felt like desperation, the kind of despair you felt when all hope was lost but you kept on fighting because to take even one step back was worse than death. It felt like a blazing rage as destructive as a forest fire, primal in its ferocity and utterly without mercy.

It felt like a mother's love.

The golden wave surged forwards, emerald green fires flickering at the peripherals; it crashed over the mental battlefield – washing everything clean.

Ra's voice flickered first. His voice weakened, becoming horrified, there was an inhuman squeal and then it was silenced and the migraine inducing presence was gone. Just gone.

Voldemort tried to hide, retreating back where it had come from, but the wave was too big. There was nowhere to hide. Now that it could find him, it wouldn't give him a second chance to flee. Voldemort raged against it – but it was futile. He had been weak, weakened further by the first attack and now he was trapped.

Without a bang or a whimper, Voldemort drowned.

#

And that was that.

#

As Harry figured it, much later, it had been like this.

Voldemort was intrinsically weak; a few scraps of a soul at best, with only wisps of magic to his name, the rest stolen from Harry – which naturally made utilising his loot rather difficult. Voldemort was a genius – there was no denying that but genii could be a fragile lot, and Voldemort had broken young. Studying Occlumency and Legilimency gave him an edge – but Voldemort wasn't used to defensive mind magic. The offensive side, he was exceptionally skilled at, unrivalled in fact, but practice at defending his mind was rather hard to come by when you were Voldemort – who would dare? Let alone defending another's mind when you were only a soul partially possessing it.

Ra on the other hand, was huge. He had millennium of experiences and knowledge – he should have been able to overwhelm the other two in an instant. Physically, though, he was on his last scale, approaching the edge of shock, he didn't have the reserves for a protracted battle. It didn't help that Ra was, by nature, inflexible, and a Muggle to boot. Thousands upon thousands of years of sustained superiority didn't encourage creative thinking, he had cunning, but he couldn't adapt, and he lacked a magically enhanced strength of spirit.

Harry may have been the youngest of the three – his wealth of experience was the smallest. Yet he was unquestionably the strongest. His subconscious had been waging a war against a parasite for nine and three quarter years. He knew how to fight a mental invasion at a soul-deep level. It wasn't even an effort anymore. More than that, he was the only one of the three who was whole, and he was a stubborn one. With Ra and Voldemort both focusing on the other, it was easy to fight his way clear of the miasma of confusion with a burst of will, accompanied by a rather enraged surge of accidental magic, full of a dying mother's wrath, and it was done.

He was Harry James Potter.

He was, apparently, a wizard.

A wizard with a bit of another wizard in his head, who had at one point been immortal as well as dead, and he had an alien Egyptian god in his head too, who was also immortal.

Huh.

Well.

That was new.

Harry did the only sensible thing and promptly passed out; his hand catching on the damp blanket and dragging it to the floor behind him as exhaustion and shock dragged him down into the black.

#

First foray into HP territory (Published foray anyway) so I'd really appreciate opinions, as well as grammatical nit-picking. Also this has been sitting on my hard drive since March 2015, it's up to 40 000 words, but the rest needs editing before publishing. Oh, and I was serious about those opinions :)