John wins a trip to England. Somehow winds up meeting Lily Evans and her green eyes in a bar. She's 20 and engaged. He's in his late twenties(he had dean at 25?) and married. She's having second thoughts and he's missing home. She asks him about his family. He tells her about his deadbeat dad Henry and his mom. She talks about her sister.
They tumble into his hotel room. She leaves in the morning regretting it and confessing to her husband to be who takes it with stride he could never be angry at Lily(so long as it wasn't Snape).
They, James and Lily, get married. Sirius is the best man and Alice the Maid of Honor. They go into hiding. Harry is born. She was murdered in October 1981. She sent a letter to John in the event of her death, she didn't want Petunia to have their son. He burnt it without ever reading the contents. A second one had been sent to Gringots to notify them of her wishes. A third letter was sent by James.
James had named Harry his heir even if he wasn't his, he couldn't have children of his own, he had a fertility issue that was unfortunately hereditary(easy enough to write off with the Potter's having one or two children every half century or so James own parents were fairly old when they had him, maybe a family curse?).
A few years later Mary dies and John in his anger takes his boys to Bobby's and leaves on a trip to England. The only address he had remembered, conveniently, was that of Lily's sister, Petunia Evans. Dursley; he would be corrected. Petunia tries to hand off her nephew to his father but John declines without even looking at him.
He journals his trip, something he started after meeting Bobby. It had been the other man's idea. All hunters had them, he said. At least the great ones did. Or mad. Who's to say really? The words were often used interchangeably.
A few years back on home soil John leaves the boys with Bobby. Desperate to find his wife's killer and to a lesser extent his second son’s mother. Not certain why he had been left with her sister. Only to discover she died the night he got her letter and burned it. He doesn't dare go back to England. He's tempted to tear out the pages referencing Lily and their son. But he doesn't. He hasn't even seen the boy. Doesn't know if he wants to.
Eventually they fall to the back of his mind when he and Sam get in a fight. Sammy leaves. John lets him go. Dean was always a good soldier but John knew he was angry. At him for letting Sammy go. At Sam for leaving. At the world for taking his mother. So John jumps back into hunting leaving Dean to go his own way.
It all circles back to that night in England. At the bar. The hotel. The girl with the red hair and green eyes. John wonders then what their boy looks like. How he is doing now. How old he was. Can't have been any older than Dean. No Dean had been a baby when he left on that trip. John can't help but wonder if there weren't some supernatural power at play when he won the trip.
Some nights when Mary was still alive he'd dream of her. He worked late after nights like that. Guilt would swamp him first before the anger. At Lily and at himself for being unfaithful. For being a coward and never telling Mary when she was alive.
Then there was Adam. His youngest. He tried being there for him as he could be for Dean and Sam or his other son. It's not that he didn't love Mary. He truly did. Kate had been another fling but one he remembered enough to visit as she was alive. But he felt so guilty all the same. For sleeping with Lily. For leaving their kid behind. For pushing Sam. For Mary’s murder. For sleeping with Kate. God he was such a fuck up. How could anything good have ever come from him? How could these brilliant women ever go for a guy like him? Why? Was his life just some cosmic joke? Is this his existential mid life crisis Bobby was always going on about? It sure felt like it.
Then he got a lead on Yellow Eyes and all he could think about was ganking the sonofabitch that ruined his life. In part. He did the rest himself. Then Dean was hospitalised. Pretty much dead to the world. Everything was going too fast and too slow at the same time. So with nothing else to lose made a deal, against his better judgement and against every fibre of his being saying otherwise.
His second son apparently waltzed in and out of Hell as he pleased. To John's horror. He should have gone back up that driveway that day. Should have taken the boy with him when the woman offered. Demanded. There was a lot John should have done but didn't. A lot of things that could have been avoided if he had done them differently. If he had been faithful. If he didn't accept the suspicious trip. If if if. A life full of regrets.
His son’s name, he learned. Was Harry. For John’s father Henry. He supposed it was rather ironic. For his son he never met to be named for a dad that never stuck around. He learned a lot about his son, and Lily, in the years he spent in Hell.
First being that he wasn't a normal human. He was still human with all the parts that counted for one but he was also a wizard. Someone born with mystical abilities that set them apart from, what his son called, the mundanes, no-maj or muggles as other wizards would spit with disdain. His mother had been a witch, (not the kind he hunted) which was news to John. Had he known maybe… No, that would have changed nothing. He hadn't known about the supernatural back then. If she had told him then, John knows, he wouldn't have believed her.
Second, the family his son had been left to weren't all apple pies and picket fences, they were genuinely cruel and foul tempered people. They had given him their scraps and forced him to make their food. He was underweight for many years. To John's outrage they had his boy sleeping in a cramped broom cupboard under the stairs for a good ten or so years. His cousin was a brute. John didn't care if he'd mellowed out later. The damage had already been done. He hadn't been there. If he'd accepted the boy then. If he'd just looked down… What could he do about any of it now? He was already dead.
As if Hell couldn't get any more Hellish the demons sicced on him relished talking about The Harry Potter’s awful life upon realising it affected one of the great Winchesters in such a way. Watching him squirm and seeth and scream in rage.
Harry fought a troll at eleven. He murdered his teacher at eleven. He nearly died at eleven. He was nearly expelled at twelve. He was ostracised at twelve for talking to snakes(They don't have ears, how does that work?). He was nearly bludgeoned to death at twelve. He lost the bones in one of his arms at twelve. Had to regrow those bones at twelve. Fought and killed a fucking sixty foot basilisk, (John didn't even know those were real), at twelve. Nearly died again at fucking twelve. Fought a possessed memory(that makes even less sense to John than talking to snakes) at twelve. He hadn't even been more than a year old before he was nearly murdered alongside Lily and her husband. And still that wasn't all of it.
Sam hadn't been targeted specifically at all after that night in November (ironically the deaths of both women could be celebrated or mourned days apart). But Harry didn't seem to catch a break. Sure Sam and Dean had been hunters nearly all their lives but they had him to step in, if things went south. They had each other. There were things omitted, despite the graphic detailing from what the demon's could recount of Harry's life. But John just knows his second son had no one. He likely didn't understand how friends worked. Or Hell, even love.
The demon's dragged out their retelling of his son’s later years. And John wishes, begs and pleads for them to go back to the torture. He didn't want to hear more about how he failed. Didn't want to know about his son's less than stellar life. He was dead and couldn't do anything to physically stop what happened. But they kept talking.
He’d seen Harry at least twice in Hell. Or he thought it was his son. It could have been wishful thinking. Or a hallucination.
How the demon sonsofbitches even knew half the stuff about Harry's life, John never thought to ask. Never would have believed them if they told him.
Then one day he doesn't know when or how. Hell breaks loose. Literally. Someone picked him off the racks and shoved him in the direction of the light. John was batting demons and souls left and right to reach the surface. He remembers grappling with Yellow-Eyes. Then saying goodbye to his sons. Or well he couldn't speak but the sentiment was there. John did chance a look back at the Devil’s Gate then and saw her green eyes staring back at him. Only they were attached to a lean man with dark hair. The man vanished when he blinked. That had to have been Harry. Looking at his boys John smiled. They would be fine. He just wished he could have told them about Harry and Adam. A warm light enveloped his form and with closed eyes John vanished from Earth.
It would be years still, before the Winchester brothers found the notes their father tore from his journal. After they became acquainted with Crowley and Castiel and a boat load of other meddlesome supernatural beings and the odd normal human. (Though they tended to expire earlier than the others.) When they did, they really should have expected it by now, after trying and failing to save Adam from the Angels. Learning about his connection to John.
Dean wishes it weren't true. Prayed his view of his father wouldn't be further tarnished as time went on. Of course it could and would be. His mom hadn't even been dead the first time! She had urged him to go even. That smelled fishy in itself. Why would she tell John to go to England when Dean himself was still a baby? Why would he leave them alone?
Dean never tried getting in contact with this brother and neither did Sam. Which happened to be due to the fact Dean burned the pages pertaining to a second son before Sam. He didn't care that John wrote about feeling guilty. Didn't care that he went on and on about the green eyes of the woman he slept with that wasn't his mom. How her hair was red. How she had been engaged at the fucking time. And he knew. John knew and still did it! He wanted to blame the woman. He wanted to blame the other boy he had never met. But Dean knew that rested solely on the shoulders of his father. None of it mattered anymore. If they couldn't find the damn horsemen before Lucifer they were screwed.
The Four Horsemen on the Apocalypse, were according to a reliable source, conveniently all in one place. At one address. Lucky for them it wasn't in England. However it was in Florida.
Tireless hours(and gas money)spent behind the wheel the brothers finally make it to their destination. They shivered simultaneously as they crossed the town line and pulled up on a curb outside a colourful house? On a street of dull colours. It was almost creepy. No, it was creepy. Supposedly the Four Horsemen had been out for longer than Lucifer(who had tried and failed to summon them)roaming freely about the Earth. Or this house.
Before either of them could ring the doorbell or knock the door swung open. Not creaked. And it didn't need to be kicked in. Some shaggy haired nerd stormed out of the building. Head down. Having some one sided argument in his head or something because he didn't notice the brothers until he barrelled into them. Dean wasn't expecting this twig to knock them down let alone both him and Sam. But knock them down he did.
Maybe if Dean thought this guy was one of the Horsemen he'd be shitting bricks right now. But there was no way he'd believe that. He might not have been small but the guy was so wiry. Then he looked up, locking eyes with the bespectacled nerd. Dean stopped breathing. Those damn fucking eyes. Green. Not like his or Sammy's apple green. This dude's eyes were beer bottle green or emerald even. Like how John’d described Lily's: the purest green there ever was. There really was no other way to put it. Gritting his teeth, lip pulled back Dean shoved the freak off him. Helping Sam to his feet.
He ignored Sam telling him to chill out. Asking what had gotten into him. He picked the scrawny nerd up by his shirt. Glaring into those eyes that stared right back at him unwavering. Dean scoffed before shoving him away. It can't be this guy. He didn't look any older than twenty and that was being generous. Last Dean read his dad's other kid was still in England. And he was about as old as Dean himself.
Or he had been certain of the fact until the need spoke. He had the fucking accent to boot. He was a snarky sonofabitch too. He could have glared all day if Sam didn't step in and start apologising. Then he goes and introduces himself as Harry fucking Evans. After all this bullshit Dean was gonna find some way to kill his dad again. The nerd, Evans, invited them inside after Sam explained why they were here quietly. Evans looked relieved as if they were gonna unburden him somehow.
It wasn't until they were inside that Dean understood why. Four fucking old men were just lazing about in Evans’ living room. Two of them looked like they'd keel over any second if he breathed in their general direction. Then they flickered and Dean squinted at them. Suddenly they weren't old decrepit men. They were young. The other two didn't change. Much at least. They were all wearing some Harry Potter looking merch now though. He didn't know for sure, that was Sammy's area of media knowledge. Must've been some inside joke he wasn't getting.
Sam didn't know what to think of the four men living in his brother's house. He knew. He had known for years. His dad talked about it when they were staying at musty cheap hotels. When he was asleep and when Dean was all but dead to the world. He had been upset at first. But he had longer to adjust to the idea than Dean. Sure when Dean got back that day and walked in on them arguing. It hadn't just been about college and school. He had been asking about Lily and her son. And it made John angry. At him or himself. Sam couldn't tell. But fact was he knew about Harry before Dean.
What he didn't know was that he was Harry Potter. A fucking book and movie character. (Like those stupid Supernatural books by “Carver Edlund” that Chuck wrote.)
The Life of John’s boy's. Must have been some cosmic joke. The last one they found got kidnapped by angels. This guy lives with the horsemen of the fucking apocalypse. What even was their family's normal at this point?
They were even wearing Harry Potter merchandise. Different house colours. Then someone else walked into the room setting himself and Dean on edge. What the fuck was Adam doing here? Was this some sick kind of family reunion? Wasn't Michael possessing their little brother? Why was no one else bothered by this? This was fucking crazy. Sam turned himself around and just about made it to the door before his other older brother stopped him. Dean not Harry. They needed those rings to get Lucifer back in the cage. This coming from the guy that threw himself at Harry a few minutes ago. Unbelievable.
After they got what they came for thanks to some prodding from Harry. The two brothers were on their merry way to fuck shit up for Michael and Lucifer. According to Harry as long as the Horsemen stayed in his house they would retain their forms if they gave up their rings. Warning them not to put them on if they didn't want to take their roles.
When asked why Florida? Harry shrugged and said he threw a dart at a map, packed his things and left. Sam never asked what the deal was with the horsemen in his house. He read the books and he'd seen the movies. He was just glad it wasn't him that got stuck babysitting the harbingers of the Apocalypse. Or whatever. Adam came up at one point and Harry just said he always wanted to be an older brother.
Death told him about Adam and Sam. Sam has Dean. So he plucked Adam out from Michael's fingers and told him about their shitty lives. How if he wanted he could give him back his life and ensure his mom got into Heaven. Promising he could visit her any time. He accepted and they've been doing brotherly shit for ages or what he perceived as brotherly bonding and activities. His role models for this were the Weasleys and the Horsemen so it probably wasn't normal. But it was fun.
The fucking End.