Chapter 18
Honestly, Harry half expected the portkey not to work. That’d be yet another thing that he couldn’t do know. Another way he was useless.
But no, after he said ‘zip’ the world collapsed into itself around him, and he was spat out in a back alley in Chicago.
Harry was a little concerned about who exactly Sirius got the portkey from, seeing as he knew all legal ones had to take you to the nearest hub.
He had a much larger issue at the moment.
How exactly would he get from Chicago, Illinois to Sioux Falls, South Dakota? That wasn’t rhetorical, he would take any answer he could get.
It took a while before the idea came to him.
He’d only really heard of it in cautionary tales, but it couldn’t always end badly, right?
So, he stood there on the side of the highway that he was pretty sure headed west and stuck his thumb up.
By the half hour mark of waiting, he was cursing himself for not stuffing himself to bursting at Grimmuald.
An hour in one of those super big shipping trucks that Harry had thought were only in movies slowed down to a stop next to him. Turns out they’re just an American thing.
An old man, much too old to still be working such a physically demanding job yelled from the driver’s seat, “Need a ride?”
“Yes! That would be great sir!”
After climbing into the passenger seat, they were on their way.
“Where’re you headed?”
“Sioux Fall Sir. Visiting my uncle.”
The man gave him a look a little too long to be comfortable seeing as he was currently driving.
“You far from home?”
“A bit, yeah.”
His eyebrows crunched in concern.
“I’m not on to but in on things that aren’t my business, kid. But your doin’ alright, right? I know a few folks who could get you back on your feet. Good ones, too.”
“Oh! No, no, I’m not running aw- well. I’m going to be staying with my uncle. So, I- I’ll be fine.”
After another concerningly long look that had Harry almost wanting to remind him that he was, in fact, driving a monster of a vehicle, the old man spoke again.
“Well, if you change your mind, just tell me. Okay?”
He fought the urge to cry. If Remus had taught him anything, it was that he needed to carry his own shit. He couldn’t put it all on a kind old man.
“Okay.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, only broken with a question or two about each other’s lives. The dude, because he’d learned the man was much too cool to be called an ‘old man’, was an actual, drink and do drugs rockstar when he was younger. He also, apparently, had a nephew that was only a few years older than Harry that was super into sci-fi who he visited pretty often. The kid wasn’t actually the dude’s nephew, just a kid that he had took to his sister to get clean.
“I think you’d get along, he’s super into the leather jacket vibe right now, couldn’t get enough of The Matrix.”
He looked down at his jacket, smiling a bit.
“This was my brother’s, I’m actually gonna be seeing-”
A ringing noise rose in volume, cutting of his sentence.
It rose and rose and- the man next to him cringed and took his hands the wheel to shield his ears, making Harry realize he had done the same.
It became a screech, the lights on the trucks board start flashing and then smoking, liquid beginning to slip from his attempt to plug his ears.
The man fell forward, body slamming into the wheel causing it to turn sharply to the left, straight into the ditch on the edge of the highway.
The sound cut out, but the damage was done, the truck tipped to the side and Harry held on for dear life, gravity pushing him toward the old man.
When it finally came to a stop, Harry realized his ears were ringing. He hung there in silence, seatbelt the only thing stopping him from falling directly onto the old man. His eyes trained on the dashboard where it was still smoking, the beginnings of a fire taking shape.
He shook the images of his brothers crumpled body out of his head.
He had to focus.
He knew fires and cars weren’t supposed to be together.
He carefully unbuckled himself, careful to not fall onto the man- he hadn’t even gotten his name yet.
“Are you- are you awake?”
Silence was his answer.
The man’s head was thrown to his left, shattering the glass of the window. He could see bloody shards covering the gravel ditch below them. He let himself fall, feet breaking the remaining pieces of glass and landing on the ground below.
The front of the truck was crumpled, maybe he would be able to squeeze through, but he would never be able to drag the man with him.
He carefully unbuckled him, shifting his weight into his arms. He looked up, the right side of the vehicle having become it’s ceiling and began to climb.
Reaching with his left hand as his right tried to hold up the man he shoved himself up, leg on armrest, leg on steering wheel, arm on seat, leg on seat, ignore the slowly rising fire next to him, leg on dashboard, lunge, and arm on car door, legs on seat, he wanted to stop to breath, the smoke starting to fill his lungs, he punched up once, then twice, and finally on the third the window shattered, raining glass down on him. He shifted his feet to get a better position and lifted the man up, shoving him non-too gently out and out the side of the truck. He followed him, crouching then pushing off, lifting himself the rest of the way with his arms.
A concerning sizzling sound started from below him and he lunged for the man, dragging him off the truck and making them tumble to the ground, rolling to shield him under him. Almost unthinkingly he brought his right hand up to shield them just as the truck burst, hot metal and flame bouncing off the tough dragon hide.
Few seconds passed in almost silence, flame crackling around him the only sound he could hear. When did his hearing return? He lifted his head from where it had been curled around the man and looked, the vehicle was nothing but molten metal and burning upholstery, whatever cargo it had been carrying turning into smoke.
He breathed for a few seconds, surprised he hadn’t been returned to the great downstairs.
He looked down and froze.
The man wasn’t breathing.
He darted his hands along the man’s pockets, relief filling him when he felt a phone.
“911 what’s your emergency?” Came the women’s calm- too fucking calm voice.
“Car crash! On- on highway 90. We just passed Luverne, he- he isn’t breathing!”
“Sir, make sure his head is tilted backward, okay?”
“Yes! Yes, it his!”
“Do you know how to perform CPR?”
“What the bloody hell is that?!”
“You need to put your dominant hand over your dominant one,” Harry felt a bolt of worry as he almost said, ‘what if I’m ambidextrous?’ before he threw it away, “Then place them on his chest, okay?”
“Yes! Yes, I did it.”
“Now push down twice a second, firmly, a broken rib is better than not being alive.”
“Okay- yes I’m doing it.”
“Good, an ambulance should arrive in less then two minutes, I need you to stay calm. Can you do that?”
“Yes. I- I can.”
“Your doing good. How old are you?”
Harry didn’t see how that was at all relevant to the situation at hand, but answered anyway, “fourteen- almost fifteen.”
“You’re doing great.”
“I don’t bloody think I’m doing that great seeing as he isn’t fucking brea-” The man below gasped a lung full of air.
“Sir! Are you- of course you’re not okay.”
“Place him on his side and his jaw open, you need to keep his airway clear.”
Harry rushed to follow the instructions.
“Kid?” The man mumbled.
“Thank Merlin! I didn’t even get your n-”
He stopped as he heard the sirens begin in the distance.
“That’s an ambulance- I called it when I realized you weren’t breathing.”
The man let out a wet cough that shot a bolt of worry down his heart before he spoke, “What ha-” and was cut off by another cough.
“A- a car crash. You- you drove into the ditch.”
He didn’t know what the hell that sound was, but it sure as hell wasn’t natural, and if the man didn’t remember it, he felt no need to introduce him to the supernatural.
The man breathed in to speak again but Harry stopped him, “You probably shouldn’t speak right now, just focus on breathing, okay?”
All he got in response was the continued rough breathing, wet and scratchy.
He only looked away from him when the flashing lights of the ambulance finally arrived, paramedics rushing forward to carefully lift and transfer the man onto a stretcher. Harry sat there for a moment in shock, before remembering that he was injured. In front of doctors. Doctors who would find out that no, he is not in the country legally, not in the magical way nor the muggle way.
Seeing that this would be his only chance, he ducked behind the bushes on the other side of the ditch and began walking.
Bobby’s house couldn’t be too much farther, could it?
-----
They killed it. They really did.
His mother, Jess, Andy, Ash, Harry- they finished it.
The fresh air on his face from the open window in Bobby’s cluttered kitchen felt like it was cleansing him, cleansing his blood, from the inside out.
It didn’t hit him until now, the day after he shot it- shot the demon three times in the chest, the morning after letting him finally breath. He hadn’t slept without dreaming of having a vision in months now, and- and it was over.
He slept quietly.
It felt like he had been drowning, thrown by current to current, unable to tell up from down and left from right, and then- in one moment- it all stopped. He saw the sun shinning above him, cutting through the darkness. He could finally find his breath.
A hand landed on his shoulder awkwardly, looking over his father- no, dad was looking at him, a smile that looked a bit forced on his face.
Sam gave him a smile of his own.
Ever since Harry had… left, his dad started trying. He was still a grade A asshole sometimes, but- he was trying. Even Bobby seemed to see it as he was allowing him to stay in the house on a probationary basis.
It only took one of his kids-
Harry.
They had searched. Dean said the deal was six months and- nothing. There were no records of a ‘Harry Potter’, nor a ‘James Potter’, and one ‘Lily Evens’ seemed to disappear off the face of the earth the second she turned eleven.
The day that time ran out was silent.
“You- okay?” His dad’s stunted words sounded like he had to force them out.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m okay.”