“It’s weird!”
August 2nd
Harry woke up groggy and momentarily confused. Where was he? It took him a few seconds of blinking through the car window to recognize Bobby’s house.
It was disorienting, spending so much time in a car. When Harry fell asleep, they were in Colorado and it was dark. But it was light then, hot too, and they were back at Bobby’s.
The ache in Harry’s neck and back from sleeping so long in an awkward position had him mildly annoyed at his brothers. Maybe they thought it was kind to let Harry sleep uninterrupted, but Harry’s bed was a sight more comfortable than the backseat of Dean’s car.
Harry wasn’t really annoyed though, not at all. How could he be? Harry just spent a brilliant week with his brothers… really being part of a family and doing holiday things like Hermione always did with her family.
For the first time in his life, Harry actually had a holiday with his family. And, even if they might not have known it, Harry even got to celebrate his birthday with his brothers.
It was more than enough for Harry to forgive them when he got out of the backseat and stretched his sore muscles out. Even if part of Harry felt horrible for Sam, who had broken Harry’s heart when he had sobbed in the graveyard over his girlfriend’s grave, Harry was grateful they went.
Harry was just grateful in general. Even toward Sirius, as much as his advice was rubbish, Harry was grateful. And when Harry had to sneak away in a couple of weeks to get back to Hogwarts, if his brother’s said they didn’t want to hear from him again… well… Harry would still be grateful for the memories they made.
It was gratitude that was quickly twisted to concern when Harry was greeted inside the door by Sam.
“Hey, I was just coming to wake you up,” Sam said. There was something odd about his smile… it was… maybe a bit too cheery?
It made Harry nervous anyway.
“Oh, er… did you want to go for a run?” Harry asked. They didn’t train while they were on holiday or the hunt before that; Sam ran, but he did it alone. Harry couldn’t imagine what else would make Sam look so happy though.
“What? No, come on, Dean made breakfast.”
Harry tried to not be weird when Sam put his arm around Harry’s shoulders to guide him to the kitchen. Maybe… maybe Sam was just feeling better after his horrible and heartbreaking crying jag?
… or Harry was still asleep and having a very odd dream as he walked in the kitchen and found a table covered in frosted cupcakes and his brother wearing an apron. Harry rubbed his eyes very hard when Dean turned around and smiled at Harry.
“Morning!” Dean said, much, much, too brightly. “I made breakfast!”
“You made… cupcakes,” Harry said slowly. He felt trapped by Sam’s arm suddenly in the face of unexplained cheerfulness and cupcakes. Harry shrugged from Sam’s grip and looked around the small kitchen for Bobby.
“Bobby’s out in the barn,” Sam said, guessing what Harry was looking for before he pulled a chair out for Harry. “Sit.”
Harry did, only because after the last week he didn’t think he was in any immediate danger from either of his brothers. That didn’t mean he didn’t think they were being bloody strange though.
“Does that… does that have an H on it?” Harry asked, tilting his head and squinting at one of the cupcakes that had red frosting and a squiggly brown ‘H’ on it.
Harry didn’t tell his brothers about his birthday, sort of embarrassed and unsure how to bring it up since they already thought he was fourteen. A small part of Harry didn’t want to mention it anyway, just pretend it didn’t exist so if nobody cared then Harry wouldn’t be hurt by having any sort of expectations. But… the cupcakes two days after Harry’s birthday were odd timing and Harry didn’t see any squiggly S’s or D’s.
“Here.” Dean snatched the one that Harry had been inspecting and sort of shoved it at him. “Eat it.”
Harry leaped from his chair, letting the cupcake fall, and sent a panicked look from Dean to Sam.
“Is it poisoned?” Harry yelped, terrified by the way Dean just shoved it at him after marking it with a horribly misshapen H. “Did I do something wrong?!”
“What? No!” Sam held his hands up, but stayed out of Harry’s immediate space. “Dean’s just trying to be nice.”
“Stop it! It’s weird!” Harry cried, very much hating the unusual behavior. Sam and Dean argued, Dean liked to rough house, Sam liked to talk with his hands. Dean always seemed to use the loud radio to calm himself out of a mood, Sam didn’t sleep well when he was upset.
Harry did not spend almost two months learning all the little things he could about his brothers for them to ruin it all by - by being nice.
“I’m going to go take a shower and change,” Harry said, trying to force down his worry to scowl at the two of them. “Can we be normal when I get back?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
“Absolutely not,” Dean deadpanned.
“Dean, cool it,” Sam hissed.
Harry backed slowly from the room and as soon as he was safely in the hallway, he ran for the door to go get his backpack out of the car. Harry leaned against the car for a second, just catching his breath and telling himself he was overreacting.
Harry only knew his brothers for less than two months… they weren’t necessarily being weird, maybe Harry was. Or maybe they were possessed by demons. Demons who… loved to bake cupcakes and smiled too much?
It was tempting to throw his cloak on and go eavesdrop, try and determine why his brothers were acting so strange, but Harry just barely resisted. The house had a lot of squeaky floorboards and Harry’s brothers would surely guess he was there. Or that he was a ghost or something… it all ended with Harry being shot at.
Harry figured if Bobby was already working outside and Sam and Dean were in the kitchen then there wasn’t a rush for Harry to take a quick shower. It was nice being allowed to just take a hot shower then get dressed in clothes that were picked out just for Harry.
It was all sometimes overwhelming, but Harry tried to react normally to things. Ron probably didn’t cry when he was given his bedroom and Hermione probably didn’t get weepy over clothes.
Probably.
It was with the reminder of all that everyone had done for Harry that he returned downstairs to be a little more grateful for the… cupcakes.
Thankfully, both of Harry’s brothers and Bobby were in the living room, not the kitchen, so Harry didn’t have to puzzle over Dean baking. Instead, Harry was invited outside which was just as puzzling with the way everyone kept sharing odd looks.
“I… why?” Harry asked suspiciously. If Bobby was involved, Harry wasn’t overly concerned, they were just acting so strange!
“Just shut up and come on,” Dean said before taking the lead out the front door.
Harry glanced up at Sam but he only had a mysterious little grin on his face so Harry huffed and put his hands in his pockets to follow. They went around the house, past the garage, directly toward the faded red barn that Harry had never been in before.
Dean told Harry that was where Bobby kept some of the machinery he used to work on cars, so Harry thought maybe they were going to do… something with cars that took four people?
Honestly? Harry had been less confused on his first day of traveling around Hogwarts than he was then.
“Wait here,” Sam told Harry when they reached the barn. Sam and Dean slipped in the barn, leaving Harry alone with Bobby.
“What are they doing?” Harry asked Bobby immediately. Bobby was trustworthy, if it was something terrible surely he would tell him.
“Being some damned morons,” Bobby said with a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “They got good intentions though, try to go easy on ‘em.”
Harry hummed at that nonsensical statement and rocked anxiously on his feet until Sam yelled that he could go in.
As soon as Harry stepped in the barn, he froze in place and Bobby bumped into him.
“Happy birthday!”
It… what?!
Harry’s eyes were surely as round as galleons as he looked around the barn. It had been… decorated, sort of, with a few black balloons that were lying on the dusty floor. There was a handwritten piece of paper taped to the front of a card table that said ‘Happy Birthday Harry’. A dozen of the cupcakes from the kitchen had been moved to the table along with a box and two plastic bags.
“What’s…” Harry swallowed the lump in his throat and looked at where his brothers stood behind the table with broad smiles. “What’s this?”
“A birthday party,” Dean said. “Alright, it’s a little under-decorated, but it was last minute.”
That cleared up nothing, really.
It was on the tip of Harry’s tongue to tell them it wasn’t his birthday (and how did they even guess so close? Just… math from the day Harry said their dad met his mum?), but…
“This is brilliant,” Harry said. He stepped forward to the table and felt unusually shy. “I’ve never actually had a birthday party.”
And it sort of explained why Sam and Dean had been acting so weird.
“Told you he’d love it.” Dean slapped Sam’s chest with the back of his hand.
“Don’t mind the balloons, they were all we had from when Bobby turned fifty,” Sam said, grinning at Harry as happily as if it were his birthday. “Here! We even did presents.”
Harry accepted a plastic bag that was tossed to him by Dean and opened it while Bobby grumbled that he wasn’t fifty.
“I…” Harry pulled Dean’s light brown leather jacket from the bag and held it up quizzically. “Isn’t this yours?” he asked Dean.
“It was Dad’s,” Dean said casually while he peeled the paper off a cupcake. “I got the car, Sam’s got the journal, I figured you could have his jacket.”
When Dean realized everyone was giving him a look - Harry’s was pure shock - Dean licked the icing off the cupcake in one go and stuck his tongue out at them.
“It was that or porn,” Dean said after swallowing. He grinned at Sam’s exasperated eye roll. “Hey! Skin mags are a Winchester birthday tradition!”
“That’s what he gave me for my twelfth birthday,” Sam said drily with a crooked grin. He grabbed another of the bags and offered it to Harry. Harry had to put his jacket over his shoulder to accept it.
Harry thought it felt like a book, but it wasn’t. It was a shoebox filled with…
“Okay so the closest gas station didn’t have any notebooks or envelopes, but I thought these were cool.” Sam sounded sheepish while Harry flipped through a stack of different colored postcards. There was a roll on stamps in there too and Harry sort of hoped there was an explanation when he looked at Sam.
“It’s so you can write to your friends,” Sam said. “It’s symbolic, alright? You’re supposed to catch the sentiment here.”
“The sentiment bein’ that these two emotionally constipated idjits don’t want you to go jauntin’ off,” Bobby explained. He leaned against one of the poles in the barn with his arms crossed over his chest and his hat pulled low. When he nodded at the last box on the table, Harry was confused by his explanation.
“That ain’t from me.”
“Not us,” Sam said when Harry glanced at him.
Harry felt tense as he shuffled closer to the table to look at the box. It was just a cardboard box with what looked like a label ripped off it, Harry wasn’t sure why he felt so nervous… except it was probably the way nobody spoke and they were all staring hard at him.
It only took Harry unfolding one flap of the box to suck in a hard breath and take two steps from the table.
It had only taken one glimpse inside the box to see a book right on top. The book wasn’t the issue, the flying quidditch players on the cover was the issue.
The very magical book in the pre-opened box was the issue.
Harry could see it clearly then. That was how his brothers guessed his birthday. An owl, maybe Hedwig who had never failed Harry before, must have arrived- a few days later than usual, Ron must not have known how long it would take Hedwig to find him. Hedwig brought a box with at least one magical gift in it and ruined Harry’s entire plan.
The only thing Harry couldn’t figure out then was why…? If Sam and Dean already opened the box, and if Bobby was standing there calmly, then- then they knew.
They knew Harry was a wizard.
A freak.
Evil.
Harry exhaled hard and then turned on his heel, planning on leaving the barn. Unfortunately, Dean was faster and must have guessed Harry’s next move as he quickly darted around the table to block the door. When Harry flinched away from his arm that Dean raised to block the door, Sam quickly popped up beside Harry and started rambling.
“Look, Bobby explained everything, okay?”
Not okay, Bobby was a traitor.
“You boys can work it out,” Bobby said calmly when Harry shot him a glare. He didn’t seem bothered by Harry’s quick anger, he only settled in his spot more firmly.
Harry had a plan. A good plan. One that didn’t end in his brain being blown apart by his brother.
“He said how you’re a witch—”
“Wizard,” Dean cut in, staring at Harry who looked everywhere but at him.
“How you’re a wizard,” Sam went on after correcting himself, “and about magic school. There were some owls and we might have accidentally read your mail, but—”
Harry heard enough. Harry heard that they knew about magic, they went through his mail (Harry hoped it wasn’t Hedwig who arrived and he hoped whatever poor owl had to make that journey was okay…), and they had him trapped in a barn.
“Move,” Harry told Dean, speaking just a little louder than his heart was pounding in his ears. If they wanted to kill him, he wasn’t going to make it easy.
Harry wasn’t going to be Ansem, shot in the back of the head.
Dean quirked an eyebrow up at Harry’s hard time and Sam went quiet.
“No,” Dean said.
Harry could feel his hands shaking with the same combination of fear and anger and frustration that was causing his breaths to come in short and quick gasps.
“Move,” Harry said again through a clenched jaw.
Dean smirked and it was infuriating.
“Make me.”
Harry didn’t mean to, honestly, he just felt an explosion inside of him of more feelings than he had in a long time - since he had been locked in the cupboard for two weeks and thought he’d actually starve to death - and it came out as a shock of magic.
At the rate Harry was going, he was going to end up calling Azkaban home before too long.
Whatever burst from Harry hit Dean in the shoulder, bursting his black shirt in sudden flames. Harry felt himself go pale and he could feel his legs wobbling - it was an accident… another accident… another person hurt… what was wrong with him?! - but Dean shouted and shifted away from the door.
So Harry shoved past him and ran.
Harry didn’t have time for his bag, he just took off. All he had was the jacket that once belonged to John Winchester over his shoulder and the clothes on his back.
It was fine though, really. Harry was (luckily for once) an easily identifiable wizard. Harry just needed to get to…
Shit.
Harry didn’t stop running until he was far enough from Bobby’s, deep enough in the woods, to think about what to do. Going back wasn’t an option, not if Harry wanted to live through the day, but… but Harry couldn’t actually remember the list of wizarding cities in the States that Sirius gave him off the top of his head either.
Harry grabbed a heavy rock off the ground and threw it blindly at a tree, letting out a shout of misery and anger as he did.
Harry had a plan.
Bobby ruined it. Harry didn’t have enough time to prove he wasn’t evil, to be likable, to show that wizards weren’t anywhere near the same category as demons. If Harry had more time - if Harry hadn’t destroyed over one hundred famines - he could have pulled it off.
Harry could have had an actual family to spend his holidays with. Even if they didn’t do anything except run and spar all summer long, it would have been brilliant.
And it was ruined.
Harry slumped to the ground against the tree and buried his face in his hands. When pressing his palms against his eyes didn’t relieve any of the pressure building in his chest, Harry slid his hands to to grab at his hair and pulled his knees up to scream in them.
Was that his payment for what he did? Being a part of his real family for less than two months before having it blown up in his face? Harry destroyed other families with his magic, why shouldn’t it destroy his as well?
It was just Harry and his magic… destroying everything.
Again and again and again.
Harry sat in the forest until his anger and fear bubbled out and became a dull sort of resignation.
When Harry could hear footsteps in the woods snapping twigs and crunching leaves, he didn’t bother getting up. Why would he? Why should he? Where would he go? What family would mourn him?
If they were going to kill him, Harry just wanted it to be quick.
Harry kept his knees hugged to his chest and his head tipped back against the tree even when he saw the person approaching was Sam.
It would be Sam who found him. In a cruel twist of fate, Harry would be ironically killed by the brother who seemed to have a spark of magic in him as well.
Sam saw Harry, Harry watched Sam. Sam crept closer slowly with his hands by his shoulders and Harry didn’t move.
“Can I sit?” Sam asked when he was a broomsticks length away from Harry.
“I can’t stop you,” Harry said flatly, hardening his heart against Sam. Harry liked Sam, probably more than he liked anyone in his life, but if Sam was there to be Harry’s executioner then Harry wasn’t going to waste time with niceties.
While Sam sank down to sit cross-legged on the ground across from Harry, Harry wondered what Harry’s second favorite person in the world would do when Harry was gone.
Would Sirius guess what happened? Try and find Harry when they stopped speaking every day? If Sirius found out Sam killed Harry, would he try and hurt Sam?
Sam would kill Harry and Sirius would kill Sam and Dean would kill Sirius and that would be that. Harry cared about Sirius, but he didn’t think anyone else would avenge Sirius’s murder, leaving Dean the last one standing.
And Harry couldn’t do anything about it because Sam was going to kill him.
Andy killed Ansem; Sam would kill Harry.
Honestly, Harry really thought it would be Dean. Because even when Harry thought his plan was good, there had always been a part of him sure that having a real family was too good to be true.
Why wouldn’t it end in blood and pain?
Harry looked up at the sky, or what he could see of it through the leaves, and had to swallow a few times before he could force himself to talk.
“Just so you know, my godfather is mental. So if you don’t want to be killed by a crazy man, you should probably hide my body pretty good.”
Harry tried to sound cold and uncaring, mock Sam that he knew what he was doing, but it came out tinny and weak. Sam still heard him though, even if he didn’t understand.
“We must have done a pretty bad job at introducing ourselves if you’re telling me how to hide your body,” Sam said wryly.
Point.
They had probably hidden loads of bodies before. All those witches and werewolves that they killed still had to go somewhere.
“I forgot you were an expert,” Harry said, working hard to force his face into a sneer. It was terrifying, sitting there and talking while Harry knew Sam wanted him dead. But it was also freeing in a way, no more secrets.
“Harry, would you look at me?” Sam asked, his voice suddenly gentle. Harry clocked the hand being reached out to him, he was just too tired to move away before it handed in his knee.
“Nobody’s going to kill you,” Sam said, going on even when Harry scoffed weakly. “I think you’ve got some fucked up idea of what Dean and I do, but, dude, it’s not killing innocent kids.”
Innocent kids. When had that ever really described Harry?
Harry’s eyes went blurry and he blinked quickly until they were clear. If it was going to be the end, Harry didn’t want to go out while crying. That wasn’t how his parents did it and even if the circumstances were wildly different, Harry wanted to be brave like they were.
“I’m not innocent,” Harry said in a thick whisper, his face still aimed up at the leaves. Sam’s hand twitched on Harry’s knee, squeezing it briefly, and Harry took some morbid comfort from it. “The - the plane? That was my fault.”
It was out there, the last secret Harry had. It didn’t matter if he told Sam then, at least Sam could feel justified in killing—
“Yeah, I figured that.”
Harry’s head snapped down of its own volition and he met Sam’s gaze square on. Sam didn’t look righteously angry or even surprised by Harry’s confession. Sam looked sad; his eyes were solemn and the dimples that showed when he so much as grinned were entirely absent.
Sam just heard Harry confess to 107 murders, murders he guessed at already, and he just looked sad for Harry.
Every time Harry thought he couldn’t be any more confused, he was wrong.
Every. Time.