Potions Conference

Severus frowned as he surveyed the crowd at the annual International Potions Masters' Guild Conference. Not that he'd be making any other expression anyway, as he would rather be any other place if the Conference wasn't the best (and nearly only) place to learn about the latest potions research, but he had more of a reason to frown this year than in years past.

The Guild had always been more than a little bit of a boys' club, not only because of tradition. The fact of the matter was that the Guildhall was considered a territory of its own, not subject to the laws of any country including the one it was located in. As a potions guild, there was explicitly no limit to what was allowed to be done with potions in the Hall, and pranking was only the least of it. Even the muggles had figured out how to drug a woman to rape her, and the Guild had a tendency to attract the kind of people who had no compunctions about doing that or worse, at least as long as there would be no punishment for it.

Women were targets within the Hall, and every girl who showed much promise in potions knew it. Some few of them braved the Hall to attend the Conference for the three days required to attain their Mastery, but even at his young age Severus had lost track of the number of women who he had seen give up on their dreams and settled for being no-name brewers despite their talent. It didn't matter that he didn't know the woman or that he wasn't a Gryffindor, he'd seen enough people treated as nobody should be in his life. If a warning could save her that, at least he'd be able to do something this time.

She had a drink in her hand already, apparently failing to notice the wide berth that everybody else was giving the provided food and drinks.  Severus hadn't thought that there was anybody who was stupid enough as to not bring their own nourishment—it would still get potioned, but at least it was potioned less that way. She must not have been warned. In a way, that was good; if she wasn't prepared for the dangers, she'd be easier to convince to leave before she got hurt.

As if she'd heard him thinking, or somehow felt him approaching from halfway across the room in the crowd, the woman turned and looked him in the eye. With black, curly hair framing a pretty face that couldn't be older than eighteen, with wide blue eyes, she was in more danger than he'd thought. It would have been bad enough if she'd been hideous, but as it was Severus doubted there'd be more than three people at this conference who wouldn't be targeting her.

"What exactly," he said scathingly, "possessed you to do something so stupid as to come to this conference?"

She widened her eyes in what could almost be passed off as innocence, but Severus had learned the difference between false innocence and the real thing long before he'd begun his teaching career. "What do you mean? I have to attend this conference and present independent research before I can be certified as a Potions Master."

"You know perfectly well what I mean," Severus almost growled, but was careful to keep from showing anything other than his usual demeanor. Even if he could convince the idiot to leave, he'd have to stay, and the best way to make things bad for himself was to piss off the rest of the Potions Masters.

"I-" Before she could finish, a man 'tripped' and spilled the contents of his goblet on her.

Severus winced internally, waiting for the potion to take effect, but the only effects were on the man who tripped. Severus could have sworn he hadn't gotten any of the potion on himself, but he started acting as if he had. A strong confusion and lust potion, obviously, Severus thought, seeing the man writhe on the floor until some opportunist led him off.

"As I was saying," the woman said calmly, dabbing a potion onto where she'd gotten splashed, "I can take care of myself. JJ Sheppard-McKay; call me JJ."

Severus clasped her outstretched hand; it was early to tell, but it seemed at least possible that she would survive the conference, now. "Snape."

Her face lit up. "Severus Snape? Oh, this is so great! I read your paper on aconite interactions, and it sparked off a couple of ideas in my head."

Severus arched an eyebrow; the Potions journals were restricted, with spells that no few people had unsuccessfully tried to break, to being read by Potions Masters only.

Not realizing (or, possibly, not caring) why Severus had raised his brow, the woman continued.  " I think that I'm about a third of the way to figuring out how to allow werewolves to remain in control at the full moon, thanks to your research."

Severus snapped from vague amusement at the woman to sharp interest in what she was saying. "What did you say?"

"I still have no idea how to actually cure them—and that would bring up certain ethical issues that I really don't want to have to deal with, anyway—but I really do think I'm on the right track. And given your research, I think that we could do it faster if we worked together."

Merlin knew that there had been enough half-cracked werewolf cure ideas already, none of which had panned out, but if there was even half a chance that she was right, the faster it was accomplished the better, in his opinion. Much as he hated to give any of Potter's group any credit, even he had to admit that the wolf wouldn't have tried to attack him if he had still been human in there. "Tell me more," he ordered.

Jeannieverse idea- cons

Jeannieverse AU in which she's a criminal and knows Neal Caffrey or someone in Leverage- or one of them is one of the Atlantis kids all growed up (Elliot?).
Or _Neal_'s one of the Atlantis kids and one day she comes strolling into the FBI and starts reaming him out for not keeping in contact and they've been worried sick and how could he be so stupid and etc. He edited the DNA and fingerprints in the SGC files so his wouldn't ping them. And everybody's like "WTF?" and Peter's like "Hands off, he's mine!" and Neal's...cowering, maybe? He knows charming her won't work. Maybe yelling back or something else. She might be there to work together on a case. If he's not really Neal Caffrey, but actually a Sheppard-McKay...that explains so much.

the HP-AU Jeannieverse - the Weasley twins, as an ongoing Academy project, research and write a book about pranks (Pranks: History, Philosophy, and Strategy). They spend a lot of time on research, even at home, which makes Ron not jealous of them, because the Academy looks more like something Percy would be interested in, from his POV (they don't even have quidditch! all Fred and George do is study!). Part of the research involves contacting Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, of which only Remus replies. Other parts are tracing the history of pranking and specific pranks, the purpose of pranking (bringing happiness), and how far is too far/the ethics of pranking. The book is up to academic standards and gets published.

ABM Return

In the ABM-verse, when the Return would have happened the Ancients couldn't kick them out because the fact that Atlantis gave them children meant that they had as much right to be there as the Ancients. So instead they joined the Expedition, and there were fun integration issues between the groups and who was in charge, but they worked something out, and then the replicators came along and there were some deaths but no complete wipe-outage, and the Expedition and Ancients never split up again.

All ideas are free for the taking.

Ian Edgerton's SGA past

Jeannieverse or ABM, which honestly are kind of the same verse without a set canon.

Set pre-return to Earth. John and Rodney are MIA and Jeannie winds up back on Earth with Dave Sheppard (and family, if he has one). They're totally baffled by Jeannie, but it doesn't matter much because they get kidnapped, with Jeannie as witness. So, since they're in LA and it's a high-profile kidnapping, the FBI takes the case and Jeannie ends up with the Numb3rs team. When she encounters Ian Edgerton, she glomps onto him and he acts friendly and clearly knows her already, acting somewhat contrary to the badass image. He used to be in Atlantis, and one of the people on the rotation of babysitters, not that he would volunteer that information. Somewhere in there, the Numb3rs team finds out about her intelligence, and Larry/Charlie/Amita recognize(s) the name Rodney McKay. The case is solved. Possibly Ian makes a few calls and becomes Jeannie's guardian. In the end, either she stays with Ian or John and Rodney show up, back from being MIA and worse for the wear but not permanently worse. I think I like the staying with Ian, but that would be AU for both of the verses.

All ideas are free for the taking.

Misc. ABM + Harry Potter ideas

(Some of) the ABM kids go to Hogwarts during Harry's sixth year, with the focal characters being in sixth as well and them being the oldest of the ABM kids, because they go to Salem and for some reason it's closed. I'm thinking something the ABM kids did, but not something that would get them treated like criminals or something.

The Magical States of America have a government that's closer to America under the Articles of Confederation than current America, although there are some compromises. Laws vary fairly widely (and by fairly I mean insanely), especially considering the states are split up the same way and there are only a couple of people in some states. Regional differences are not the same as they are in muggle America, and historically never have been.

All ideas are free for the taking.

ABM ideas

5 jobs held by ex-Lanteans in the ABM-verse. Because even when they hold normal jobs, they're changed enough by Atlantis and the kids for there to be weirdness, and a lot of them don't get normal jobs.

Ex-Lanteans visiting their families for the first time since they left Atlantis...and taking along the kids they couldn't tell about before, and the kids' other parents who they're not dating except in a few cases.

All ideas are free for the taking.

Bests and Worsts

Every year the Atlantis expedition held a vote for the bests and worsts: best culture encountered, worst alien life form, best Pegasus food. Although there was no requirement to vote for bests and worsts that they'd encountered in that year, most of the winners were encountered in the year they were voted for.

The first year, the Ancient Baby Machine won Worst Technology.

Every subsequent year, it won Best Technology.

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Atlantis had originally been planned so that it could become a colony, if contact wasn't reestablished...technically. But nobody had planned for a massive baby boom only nine months in. Most of the expedition members were from small families and, if they had been married in the past, they were now divorced. None of them had children that they had raised. So, few of them were prepared to have children, especially when they learned about them so late in the term. The expedition contained a few people who had more experience than babysitting as teenagers, but that wasn't enough when literally every member of the expedition was about to become a parent for the first time.

Even with extensive planning sessions- suddenly they had to set up child care that ran 28/6 and accounted for crises and missions and the fact that any one of them could die unexpectedly, the universe being what it was- the first few months were nothing less than chaos as everybody got used to their new children and dealt with the usual crises with a predictable lack of sleep.

Just when things were calming down, they found out that the Wraith were coming to attack Atlantis.

Science, and Other Cults

Atlantis is abandoned/lost/destroyed, and the expedition members return to Earth. Since few of them have strong ties to Earth, or people or places on it, they're mostly at a loss for what to do, and they can't all stay at the SGC. They end up moving to a small town/rural area, where they just buy a large tract of land and build their own buildings on it, built to their specifications for doing the jobs they want to do. And then they clash with the locals, especially the school(s) because they had kids while they were in Atlantis: their kids know it all already, they get in fights with the town kids, the adults send whoever's available to any sort of thing the school needs parents at rather than sending the parents of the relevent kids like they're supposed to. And the military who stayed in the military stop by when they have leave, and occasionally official-looking people come by, and the locals are totally baffled. They think it's a cult for a number of reasons.

All ideas are free for the taking.

Family

Family on Earth wasn't anything like family on Atlantis. On Atlantis, family was biological family and team family and work family, and those-who-risk-their-lives-for-you family, so she could claim all of Atlantis as family, and the Athosians and those Satedans who were still living as distant family. On Earth, though, family was only biological family, culled to merely blood relations, and those connections thinned until blood was like water in comparison to what family meant on Atlantis.