Metallica…
"Alright, boys, merry Christmas!" Dean tossed a bag in Harry's lap, then another in Sam's. "Go ahead." Dean sat in the hotel chair and spun it around, "Open ‘em."
Harry looked at the brown bag in his hands rather bemused and then opened it up to find…
"Oh." Harry lifted the magazine from the bag and then dropped it just as quickly, blushing furiously. It was a skin magazine… one with very naked women on the cover.
"You know…" Dean spun in his chair again and grinned wickedly at Harry. "For those long cold nights without your giiiiirlfriend."
"Dean…" Sam pulled out his own nude magazine and he waved it at Dean, the glossy pages catching Harry's attention for only a second. "Seriously? Asian Babes?"
"What? You're not into hot chicks?" Dean asked, pretending to be innocent in a way that didn't fit him at all. "C'mon, it's tradition, Sammy!"
Harry stuffed the bag under his bed, scowling when Dean laughed at him. Harry wasn't going to throw it away or anything, but he wasn't going to look at it in front of his brothers either.
"Harry's fourteen, Dean! You can't buy him porn for Christmas!"
"Of course I can, he's fourteen!"
"You cannot seriously be this immature, Dean."
"You wanna see—"
"You know what I really want for Christmas?" Harry asked loudly, interrupting whatever undoubtedly immature retort Dean had. Harry glared at Sam, then Dean. "One day where we don't fight. Just one day where we can pretend we're a normal family."
It was the only Christmas that Harry would get with both of his brothers, his only one. Harry had spent hours decorating their house; hanging stockings, wrapping the gifts he got for his brothers, making their house as cozy and festive as Hogwarts had always been.
Then Sam caught a case in Indiana and they were celebrating Christmas in a cheap motel, covered in the blood of a zombie. An actual, honest to God, zombie. Sam had broken his arm, Dean had a black eyes, Harry was pretty sure his back was covered in scratches from running from the zombie and luring it to the cemetery.
Harry healed Sam's arm the best he could and Sam was able to use it, he did wince when he stretched it out though.
It wasn't exactly how Harry envisioned it, but he wouldn't mind if his brothers didn't bicker during the whole case and if they weren't bickering on Christmas night - their first and last Christmas as a family.
"Normal?" Dean stopped spinning and the teasing grin softened to something more real, more Dean. "Kiddo, I hate to tell you, but we ain't never been normal."
"Yeah, sorry, Harry." Sam ruffled Harry's hair and Harry made a token swat at him for it. "I don't think Winchesters do ‘normal'."
Harry decided to accept that as their apologies and their promise to quit fighting for the night.
"Maybe we could watch a movie?" Harry said hopefully. That would be a good thing to do together - Harry could go to the vending machine and buy a few bags of popcorn to pop, Dean could pick a movie, they could all pile up and watch it together. It would also keep the fighting to a minimum, which was Harry's real goal.
"Dibs on picking!" Dean yelled with an immediate lunge for the remote. It wasn't likely that Harry or Sam were going to fight him for it… not when Dean was down to five months left to live.
"I'll get snacks," Harry said. It wasn't weird to take Sam's wallet and swipe a few bills from it anymore. Sam said they were a team, he said that he was going to be there for Harry and Harry was going to be there for him.
They were going to be a team and Harry knew Sam wouldn't care if he took cash to buy snacks.
"What do you want?" Harry asked Dean. "Jellybeans?"
"Hell yeah," Dean said. "And a Pepsi too!"
"Sam? Milk duds?"
"Yes, please."
Harry nodded and went to slide his boots on, thinking about what else he could get from the vending machines. It was Christmas, so Harry thought maybe he could pick a couple of treats and they could all share them.
Harry didn't even get a chance to leave the hotel room though before he felt something hot behind him. He turned around and saw a spark of red at the foot of the beds, between the two beds where Harry's brothers were. Dean sat up just as quickly as Sam stood and the single spark turned into a dozen, then hundreds of swirling red sparks.
Later, when all of the extra crazy died down, Harry would laugh at the way that he pulled his wand, Dean grabbed a revolver, and Sam dug for his flask of holy water all at the same time. At the time, Harry had been startled and then really, really, confused.
"Say hello to my little friend!" Dean clicked the chamber on his revolver and Harry stood by the door… watching his brother point a gun at… himself.
"Dean…" Sam had his flask opened and ready to splash the… whatever they wore… and he still had time to sigh. "Does it seem like the time for bad movie quotes?"
"Bad movie quotes? That movie's a classic!"
"That movie is trash."
"ONE DAY!" Harry yelled. "I ASKED FOR ONE DAY WHERE WE DIDN'T FIGHT!"
Even if weirdos stood in the middle of their motel room, Harry was still bloody sick of his brothers fighting. There was only so much time left for the three of them to be brothers, Harry didn't want to spend that time listening to them fight.
"Don't fuckin' shoot me," the… mirror Harry said. He kind of reminded Harry of his reflection in a fun house mirror at a carnival, Harry had seen it during a case on a poltergeist and it was the same way he felt then. The basic features were right, but the Mirror-Harry's details were warped, different. He had a more narrow face, paler skin, rounder eyes. His hair looked more black while Harry's was brown-black.
That Harry looked like Lily Potter and Harry had been told many times that he looked like John Winchester, but there were still similarities.
"Then you've got one second to explain who you are and how you got in here," Dean growled, never lowering his gun an inch.
"Gladly." Mirror-Harry twitched his hand at his side and managed to disarm all three of them at once. Harry's wand was just gone, slipped away from his grasp and to Mirror-Harry's.
"Harry Potter, my husband, Fred," Mirror-Harry said, waving his left hand enough that Harry saw a ring on his fourth finger. "Fred developed a potion, we're meeting my many dimensional counterparts. Would you happen to be Harry Winchester?"
"Er… yeah?" Harry said. It was Potter-Winchester, but it probably wasn't the time for technicalities.
"You're traveling dimensions?" Dean asked. "Dude, like The Mist?"
"Not everything is a movie, Dean," Sam said.
"And we don't know what that means anyway," Fred said. "Don't worry, we'll be gone in thirty minutes! In the meantime… Harry! Brothers? You've got brothers?"
"Yeah," Harry said. He didn't have his wand, Dean didn't have a gun, small-talk seemed like a good way to keep from being ganked. "This is my brother Dean and my brother Sam."
"Is Lily your mother?" Mirror-Harry asked, squinting especially hard at Dean.
"Same dad, different mums," Harry explained. "I was, er… kind of a surprise."
"A good surprise," Sam said quickly, flashing Harry a dimpled-smile. "Harry's my favorite brother."
"I'm wounded," Dean cried, clutching his chest and falling backward to land on his arse on the bed. "Harry, he's killed me."
That wasn't funny, it really wasn't.
Sam's face twitched, just as unamused as Harry was, and Mirror-Harry didn't miss any of it.
"Do you often try to kill your brother?" he asked. There was something about the way he talked, something that reminded Harry of Snape in a way. ‘Do you often' was a very Snape-like thing to say.
"No, he doesn't," Harry defended Sam immediately. "And - mind your own business, mate. We don't have to tell you a thing about our lives."
"Not one thing?" Fred asked, sticking his lower lip out in a pout. "We've traveled so far to find out alll about you."
Which made them as scummy as reporters in Harry's opinion.
"Why do you live in a motel?" Mirror-Harry asked, sounding unfairly disgusted about it. "Can't you afford a home?"
"We have a home," Harry said defensively, forgetting his own determination to not tell them a thing. "It's a great home."
It was a great home. It was everything Harry ever wanted, Harry only wished that they would have longer to all share it.
"If you say so," Mirror-Harry scoffed.
"Nobody asked you," Harry told him hotly. "Why don't you leave? We were kind of in the middle of something here."
"You're so aggressive," Fred said. "Is that a Winchester thing?"
Yes.
"No, it's a ‘you crashed our Christmas' thing and I wish you'd leave thing," Harry said stubbornly.
"I'd like to hear more about traveling dimensions," Sam said, because of course he did. "How does it work? What's the theory behind the invention?"
"Here we go," Dean sighed. "Time for Sam to geek out. Merry Christmas, everyone."
One day. Harry wanted one day.
Fred started explaining the potion and its properties to Sam while Harry kind of just sat on the desk by the door, resigning himself to be stuck dealing with unwanted guests and his brothers fighting.
"I've got a brother," Mirror Harry told Harry, crossing the room to lean against the door. "He's a prat."
"They're both prats," Harry told him, nodding toward where Dean was playing air guitar on one bed and Sam was taking notes on the other bed. "How'd you get a brother?" he asked. "You met Sam and Dean?"
"My mother didn't cheat on my father," Mirror Harry drawled, he was bloody rude, honestly. "So, no, I don't have a Sam or Dean. I have a Theo."
"Theo?" Harry repeated. He tried to think of any Theo that he knew that Mirror Harry could be related to. "The only Theo I know is Theo Nott?" he said, though he didn't really know him either. He was in Harry's year at Hogwarts, Hermione mentioned him a few times as one of Pansy's friends.
"That's the one," Mirror Harry said. He looked at his fingernails then, studying them in a bored sort of way - they were clean, short and clean. Harry looked at his own and then grimaced when he saw the dirt underneath them and the gnawed on parts.
Who had time to clean their nails though?
"Were you adopted by his dad or something?" Harry wondered. Even before Harry found out about his brothers, he didn't remember having a single conversation with Theo Nott. Harry couldn't even properly remember who he was.
And it had nothing to do with brain damage, thanks to Gabe.
"I adopted him after I killed his father," Mirror Harry said casually. When the other conversation fell silent and Harry's eyebrows flew up, Mirror Harry smirked. "I don't think child abusers have the same right to life as others, do I?"
Oh. That was different then. That wasn't murder, it was—
"Justice killing," Dean nodded. "Nice."
"Dude." Sam huffed at Dean. "You really think it would have been ‘nice' if someone—"
"Shut your mouth, Samantha."
"They do this all the time," Harry told Mirror Harry. "It's exhausting. You've got loads of brothers now though, right? The Weasleys?"
Harry used to think that it might be nice to marry Ron just to get all of his siblings as his own. It - it wasn't exactly the sort of thought Harry shared with anyone except for Hermione, but Hermione only patted him on the head and called him the best bisexual boyfriend ever.
Then Dean later promised Harry that being attracted to blokes and chicks was fine and a family trait… one that apparently Sam didn't share - that they knew of.
Tonks was a metamorphmagus though, so Sam had options if he wanted them later.
"Yes, real winners they all are," Mirror Harry said sarcastically. "There's Charlie, who I despise."
"Who is marrying Susan," Fred said.
Harry didn't know a Susan either - except for Hermione's friend Susan Bones.
"Then there's George, who is the most Merlin-awful whiner that I've ever met," Mirror Harry went on.
"He's blind and paralyzed," Fred said, startling Harry rather badly. "He deserved some time to whine."
"What happened?" Harry asked them. If Harry could be saved with magic after his wreck, surely George Weasley could be fixed by it!
"He was flying too close to a bomb when it exploded," Mirror Harry said. He truly didn't sound like he cared at all, he only continued to tick off the Weasley boys. "Percy makes me want to commit murder, an absolute dick and I don't care what Sirius says."
"Hear, hear," Sam whispered under his breath.
"Bill, who I suppose isn't awful. Then Ron, who is usually a friend of mine." Mirror Harry grimaced then, looking absolutely disgusted. "I would give up Ron if it meant I could be done with Ginevra though; she's gastly, isn't she?"
Harry didn't think so, but he supposed he didn't know Ginny as well as the others. It kind of sounded like Mirror Harry didn't like any of his in-laws though, which was sad. Maybe marriage made people treat him differently, thankfully Harry would never have to find that out for himself because Hermione was an only child.
"Oh, well… do you fight all the time with your brother?" Harry asked Mirror Harry, glaring pointedly at his brothers. Harry was hoping that he'd say no and then he'd leave and Harry and his brothers could enjoy their Christmas together peacefully.
"Every fuckin' day, don't I?" Mirror Harry scoffed. "If it weren't for Rosie, I think I'd shoot Theo again just for fun."
Dean snorted, Sam grinned, Harry sighed.
"I was hoping you were here like a ghost of Christmas from another dimension to tell my brothers to get along," Harry told him, disappointed in… himself - oddly enough. "Not to encourage them to shoot at each other."
"I don't give a fuck about your brothers," Mirror Harry said bluntly. "I am curious why you all have bags full of weapons though, are you planning a war?"
Harry looked where Mirror Harry did and saw Dean's bag of weapons from the boot of the car were in a corner of the room. Harry had gotten so used to seeing them that he barely blinked when they were around, but Mirror Harry looked fascinated by them.
"A war against demons," Sam quipped. "I don't suppose you have any ideas from another dimension about killing every demon at once or breaking a demon deal, do you?"
Harry did wince at Sam's casual mention of a demon deal. They were running out of time… Dean was so resigned to dying in May, Harry was still clinging to hope that they could save him.
Some way, somehow. There had to be something.
"A demon deal?" Fred asked, looking around at them curiously. "Which one of you was daft enough to sell your soul to a demon?"
"Let's play a game called fuck off," Dean snapped. "Forbidden topics include demon deals, got it?"
"So it was that one," Mirror Harry told Fred, eyeing Dean carefully. "Did your deal specify your soul being traded? And must it be your entire soul? You can live forever with a half-soul, can't you?"
"Er… can you?" Harry asked. It reminded Harry then of the demon he bartered with offering to take someone else's soul from Harry, probably some innocent person.
If Harry knew he could have given up a stranger's soul to keep both of his brothers alive, he would have done it. And that… that was kind of scary to consider. Because was there a limit? Would Harry kill ten people for his brothers? Fifty? Would they still consider him family if he did?
"Don't be daft," Mirror Harry sneered. "You've got the scar on your forehead, you know how souls work."
"Hey, don't call our brother daft," Sam said. "Harry's very smart."
That was nice of him to say, if not entirely true. Sam was really the brains of their family, Harry wasn't too prideful to admit that.
"And what's my scar got to do with souls anyway?" Harry asked, lifting his hand up to touch his scar. It was from the killing curse, it didn't have anything to do with Harry's soul.
"You don't know?" Mirror Harry lifted an eyebrow at Harry, he had a mocking sort of look, like everything he said was arrogant and rude. "That scar is from Timmy leaving a slice of his soul inside of you. As long as you live, so does he."
Harry froze in place, his finger still touching his scar. As his eyes bulged, he tried to make that make sense.
There was no way, no way that Harry had a bit of —
"Did you call him Timmy?" Harry asked absurdly, distracted by that. "His name is Tom."
"Which means he especially hates being called Timmy," Fred said happily. "You should try it next time you see him, it's not like he can kill you yet."
"You have… Voldemort's soul… inside of you…" Sam said slowly, staring so hard at Harry that his skin prickled. "Dude."
"Dude," Dean echoed.
Yeah, ‘dude' about summed it up.
"How'd you get yours out?" Sam asked Mirror Harry. "Can it be removed?"
"Through death," Mirror Harry shrugged. "If your brother makes a horcrux of his own and has someone kill him, he could return. It's imprecise, but if he's strong enough to fight himself and find remorse, it can be done."
"What's a horcrux?" Harry asked, positively jabbing himself in the forehead by then. It wasn't likely that Harry would feel proof of what he said, but it was sick, insane.
"It's an object or being that you store a piece of your soul in," Fred answered Harry. "As long as you have that, you won't die. Make a horcrux, have someone kill you, reabsorb your soul to come back."
Sam lunged for his notebook and pen and looked ready to write down every word that they said. "How does he make a horcrux?" Sam asked. "And what's the incantation to reabsorb the soul piece?"
Mirror Harry sighed dramatically, as if he wasn't the one to bring it up himself. Harry was still sickened by the idea that there was a bit of Voldemort inside of him and barely noticed that Mirror Harry and Fred's shoes started sparking red.
"To create a horcrux, you have to kill a person and drink their blood," Mirror Harry said - ending Harry's ideas of doing it to get rid of Voldemort's soul piece at once. "To reabsorb it, you'll have to feel immense remorse for the murder. It's not simple, nor easy."
"Oh that's sick," Dean said, actually looking a bit green. "You have to drink someone's blood?"
Harry once worried that his brothers were psychotic serial killers… and Dean not commenting about the whole ‘killing someone' bit of the instructions only reminded Harry of that very real concern he once had.
"Not very tasty, over quickly enough," Mirror Harry said. "I found it preferable to death, but I never said you fuckin' had to, did I?"
No, he didn't. And Harry didn't need to do that anyway, because the demon asked Harry which soul and Harry finally understood why.
"Demon deal!" Harry yelled, beaming when he looked at his brothers. "Sam, we summon a demon - I trade Voldemort's soul to save Dean!"
"Oh, shit!" Sam jumped up immediately and grabbed his jacket. "Harry, you're right! Let's go!"
Dean started to argue and Mirror Harry and Fred were sparking brightly enough to be a real distraction, but they had the answer. They did.
It was a Christmas Miracle; Dean didn't have to die, Harry had the bargaining chip inside of him the whole time!
By the time that Mirror Harry and Fred disappeared from their motel room, Harry and his brothers had everything they needed to summon a crossroad demon. Dean was still offering token protests about how it might not work, but it might work.
It might work and it was the first real break they had in ending Dean's deal.
"We have to try, Dean," Sam told Dean on their way to the car. "If it was me or Harry, you'd try, you know you would. Just - God damn it, Dean, let us freaking try!"
Dean looked from Sam's face of determination to Harry's for a couple of seconds before he sighed.
"Fine," he agreed. "We can try."
It might not work, but it might.
And since Harry's brothers didn't fight the entire drive to the crossroad to summon the demon, Harry considered it another Christmas Miracle.