“Dad screwed a witch.”
Sam sat on the ground across from Harry with one hand on Harry’s knee and his heart aching in his chest.
As soon as Bobby said it, Sam believed it.
It had explained everything - from the first time Sam met his brother in that library clear to the anxiety that Harry had when they talked about hunts. It even explained Sam and his visions. If Harry was a wizard, then maybe that’s all Sam was too. Sam had a little bit of Dean’s freckles and a little bit of Harry’s magic.
Sam had laughed until he was nearly in tears of relief when Bobby told them what he had known for weeks. Dean was pissed that Bobby didn’t tell them, Bobby said he was waiting for Harry to do it himself.
“He thinks if the two of you knew about it that he’d be the next thing you’d be huntin’.”
That wiped the smile off Sam’s face pretty quickly. Wasn’t that the quiet fear Sam had in the bottom of his heart every time he had a vision? Didn’t Sam half expect Dad to use the Colt on him when he found out that Sam was having visions?
Sam was twenty-two, Harry was fourteen. There was a big difference between Sam - Sam who grew up with Dean and knew his brother like the back of his hand - having an irrational fear and Harry having one.
For starters, Sam knew it was irrational.
Maybe not about Dad, but Sam would have to mess up pretty badly for Dean to put a bullet in his head. And since Sam wouldn’t mess up that badly - he couldn’t - then it was irrational.
Harry’s fears, his idea that Sam would hurt him or that Dean would place him in the same category as werewolves or shapeshifters, was irrational. Harry was just the only one who didn’t know that.
When Harry ran off from what, in hindsight, probably felt like a trap to him, Sam had offered to go after him. Dean wanted to, but he wasn’t great at what he would call chick flick moments.
Sam wasn’t a pro, he didn’t have a lot of learning opportunities, but he knew that Harry confessing to causing his plane to crash called for a chick flick moment.
“The - the plane? That was my fault.”
Sam’s stomach twisted at the words that he had floating in the back of his mind since the second Bobby said Harry had powers. Truthfully, Sam had been subconsciously wondering if it was true since Colorado.
It made sense.
There was no evidence of anything supernatural on that flight aside from Harry. The reports that Sam hacked in Colorado were finalized and the airplane was cleared of any mechanical failure. Harry said back then that he had headaches like Sam and Sam really thought they were the same until Harry denied having any powers directly to Sam’s face.
Only after Sam told him that the last person they met with powers was dead though.
“Yeah, I figured that,” Sam said. When Harry suddenly looked Sam in the eyes, surprised that Sam could do basic leaps in logic, Sam tried to hide the pity he felt.
Harry was a kid and when Sam met him in the library, he had seemed desperate in his search about how airplanes worked. Sam had brushed it off as post-traumatic stress, fear, something. But with the new light on who Harry was, Sam thought it was desperation to be absolved.
It was the same desperation Sam felt every hunt - if he could save one life, two lives, fifty… then Mom and Jessica’s deaths wouldn’t weigh so heavy on him.
As much as Harry looked like Dean, Sam thought he could relate to him much better.
“You figured?” Harry repeated, making it a question. “You just… assumed that I was a murderer?”
That was why Sam went after Harry on his own. Dean was great, but Harry had a really poor self-image. Sam had flicked through a few articles about kids who were abused after he couldn’t find any secret meaning to ‘I lived in a cupboard’.
There wasn’t one profile to fit all the personality traits of kids who grew up with a lack of love, but there were three Winchesters to fit every symptom Sam read.
Sam quit searching down that rabbit hole pretty quickly.
The point was, Harry had poor self-esteem but even Sam thought that was a leap to assume Sam was calling him a murderer to his face.
“I mean, I don’t think you did anything on purpose,” Sam said slowly, trying to make his stance perfectly clear. “But powers are unpredictable, right? If it was an accident, it was an accident.”
It was a pretty horrific accident, but Sam didn’t think a kid should have to carry that blame. Harry didn’t seem like the type to just send a plane full of innocent people to their death on purpose.
Unless Sam was a really bad judge of character. Sam had been wrong about Meg, but he’d been right about Lenore and Andy.
“It was an accident,” Harry said, proving Sam wasn’t completely useless. Harry’s eyes were getting wet and there was a desperate edge to his voice. “I swear, Sam, I swear on - on my parents graves, okay? I just -” Harry pulled on his hair while he was suddenly far away, staring past Sam while tiny and sad tears trickled down his cheeks.
“The airplane was shaking, and I’ve never flown before… And I was scared, alright? I thought it was going to crash so I… I went for my wand. I don’t know any spells to keep an airplane up, but it was a reflex.”
It was a good reflex. Sam would bet that Harry used his wand like Sam used a gun. And Sam could picture it too clearly —
Harry experiencing turbulence for the first time in his life, probably automatically grabbing his only weapon and defensive tool…
“When I had it in my hand, the plane shook again and- and sometimes magic just bursts out. I can’t always control it.”
Sam figured that was how Dean was caught on fire back at Bobby’s barn. Dean was fine, he was just pissed he gave Harry an opening to run off.
“I keep trying to go over it, every single day, but I must have panicked and had some burst of magic…” Harry wiped his face off with the back of his left arm and Sam was surprised when his right hand landed on top of where Sam was still grasping his knee.
“Please.” Harry caught Sam in his gaze then and Sam had never seen someone look so damn miserable. Harry was just a kid walking around with the crushing weight of 107 lives on his shoulders.
“Sam, please, I’m so sorry,” Harry said, his voice shaking and his tears falling unchecked. “I’m sorry.”
Sam should have lied.
As soon as Harry mentioned the plane, Sam should have lied to him. It would have been easy, Sam could have said that they found ectoplasm or sulfur in the wreckage. Any lie would have been kinder than a stark acknowledgement of the truth.
That was a big mistake to have made as a brother, but when Sam scooted around so he could grab his little brother in a tight hug, letting Harry fall apart in his chest, that was good.
Sam was going to be good, Harry was going to be good.
It would all be good at some point.
When that would be, Sam had no idea. But he hoped it started there.
“So… magic school, huh?”
Sam and Harry sat in the woods together until Harry was able to sit up and scrub his face with his shirt. It took another thirty minutes of Sam convincing him that nobody planned to kill him - they would never - before Harry agreed to go back to Bobby’s.
It was actually almost funny how Harry had missed what Sam and Dean thought had been obvious.
“We knew you were a wizard before we did the whole party thing,” Sam said, bewildered how their good intentions had been so misconstrued. “It was supposed to be like ‘hey, we don’t care, happy birthday’.”
“That’s what I was supposed to get from it?” Harry asked, looking shocked. “I thought… a trap, maybe…”
“If any of us were going to kill you, we would have done it in your sleep,” Sam said, trying to make light of what was actually a really messed up thought. “It would have been easier than Dean baking like four dozen cupcakes.”
For whatever reason, that at least soothed Harry’s fears enough that he agreed to head back with Sam. They walked together, occasionally burning in each other. Sam tried to offer Harry the same silent reassurance that he wasn’t alone that Harry gave him back at Jessica’s grave.
Magic was the elephant between them and Sam wanted to crush it. Bobby had been annoyingly sparse on details, he mostly just said that Harry was a wizard from ‘a world they couldn’t begin to understand’.
Sam wanted to understand.
Sam wanted to know what quidditch was and what muggles meant. Sam wanted to know every single thing about his brother’s life that Harry had hidden before.
Especially magic school.
“Hogwarts,” Harry said, his voice raspy but not as fearful as it had been. Sam couldn’t see his face, he had his head ducked, but Sam swore that he was smiling when he said it.
“It’s a school for witches and wizards. On my eleventh birthday, the school sent Hagrid to come tell me I was a wizard.”
“Why when you were eleven?” Sam asked curiously, bumping Harry’s side with his hand again.
I’m listening.
“That’s just when we start school for it.” Harry shrugged his shoulders up. “I’ll be a fourth year in September.”
Sam kind of doubted that, but there had been enough drama that day without adding more.
“And you thought criminal sounded better than wizard?” Sam asked, laughing and flashing a smile when Harry peeked up at him.
“My aunt and uncle tell their neighbors I go to a boys school for criminals,” Harry said matter-of-factually. “It, er… was just the first thing I thought of. They don’t actually like magic either.”
Either?
Sam didn’t have a problem with magic; Sam didn’t like monsters, but Harry wasn’t a monster.
“Harry, hey.” Sam caught Harry by the wrist and held it loosely, just tight enough to catch Harry’s attention. Sam had his eyebrows drawn and wondered how he messed up so much that Harry had actually been afraid of him.
Sam wasn’t exactly normal himself. Dean called him a freak and he wasn’t wrong. Sam was a freak, so was Harry.
That didn’t make them bad, just different.
Harry looked at Sam and Sam hoped he didn’t mess anything up worse.
“I don’t hate magic,” Sam said. He nearly grinned when he thought of his childhood phase of magic tricks and magicians. Sam thought magic was cool.
“And I don’t think you’re a monster,” Sam told him firmly. “I mean, you don’t really scream evil mastermind.”
“I could,” Harry said, following Sam’s lead and trying to add some levity to what turned out to be a rough day. He swiped his bangs off his forehead, showing the scar Sam noticed a few times before. “I’d pick a better name than Voldemort anyway.”
“Vol de mort?” Sam repeated, struggling to remember the two semesters of French he took. “That’s… flight from death, right?”
“Is it?” Harry dropped his hand and shrugged. “It’s the wizard that killed my parents. I didn’t know it had a different meaning, I just figured it was a clever enough anagram.”
Sam bit the corner of his lip and tried to not laugh at Harry. It was half hilarious, half frustrating beyond belief. Sam wanted to know what every single thing he was saying meant, but he didn’t want to push him when he already fucked up his birthday.
“At some point, you have to explain everything to me in as many details as possible,” Sam said. They resumed their slow walk back to Bobby’s and Sam could just see the trees beginning to thin enough to show someone pacing on the other side of them.
It was Dean, because of course it was.
Dean probably felt as shitty about everything as Sam did.
Harry must have noticed or heard the same signs of Dean that Sam did because he abruptly stopped and looked at Sam with big eyes.
“I - can you go tell him that it was - I didn’t mean to - just—”
“Nobody thinks you caught Dean on fire on purpose,” Sam assured him quietly. Dean knew they were there, he had ears trained to hear the slightest sounds and he must have heard them stop walking because he stopped pacing.
“Sam.” Harry was the one to reach out then and he grabbed Sam’s wrist in a viselike grip to pull Sam closer to him. Harry began whispering quickly, a trace of panic returning to his tone.
“Look, I reckon you’re a bit magic too, right? So I can see why it would be hypocritical of you to kill me, but Dean - Dean is different, isn’t he? Please, Sam, please don’t tell him anything about - about what I said earlier.”
Harry was pleading and desperate and Sam hated himself a little bit for lying to him. Sam couldn’t keep shit from Dean, he wouldn’t. At some point, Harry would probably feel the same way about Dean because Dean was a rock.
Always there, always dependable, loyal to a fault.
Dean was the good son, the obedient one. Dean was the good brother, the one who was always there.
Harry was new, but once all the freaking secrets were out then he’d get it.
“Okay,” Sam said, placating Harry. “I won’t tell him anything.”
“Okay.” Harry breathed out heavily and rocked on his shoes while he looked out through the trees where they both knew Dean was waiting. “Okay,” he repeated.
Sam didn’t tug his wrist out of Harry’s hold, he just let him squeeze it while they made it the last few feet out of the woods.
And when Dean took three long strides to get to them so he could pull Harry in for a totally manly and not at all chick flick style hug, they were kind of all connected for a few seconds.
It was nice, it was kind of like the weirdest family moment in the world, but… but it was still a family moment.
Dean and Bobby moved the party inside where everyone settled for a dinner with the air so tense it put Sam on edge.
Dean kept looking at Harry, opening his mouth, shaking his head, then closing his mouth. Harry kept shooting glances at the box from his friend that sat on the counter, something about it was irritating him where his eyebrows twitched every time. Bobby didn’t seem too uncomfortable, but he was slamming back his beers pretty quickly.
Sam decided to break the silence at the exact same time as both of his brothers.
“You’ve got two letters, by the way,” Sam said to Harry.
“There’s a mirror in your room that keeps saying your name,” Dean also said to Harry.
“Where’s my owl?” Harry asked Bobby. “Wait,” Harry turned to blink at Sam, “I had another letter? Besides the one that you read?”
“That’s more pressing of an issue than the mirror in your room that’s talking?” Dean asked incredulously. “Dude, magic mirror takes priority over mail.”
“That’s just, er… Star,” Harry said flippantly.
Dean fixed Harry with the most deadass look while he snagged one of the beers from the middle of the table and popped the cap off.
“And by Star I’m guessing you mean Sirius, the innocent murderer?” Dean asked before he took a smug drink when Harry looked shocked at his guess.
Sam was shocked too, honestly. How did he not put that together as quickly as Dean did?
Star, Sirius…
Sam started laughing then, hard. He dropped the fork he’d mostly been pushing macaroni around with so he could grab the edge of the table and laugh. When Sam picked his head up and saw that Dean and Mini-Magic-Dean were giving him identical looks of confusion, he absolutely lost his mind.
Bobby only snorted and shook his head in a resigned way, like he wasn’t surprised at all that Sam was suddenly having a fit of hysteria.
“You’re a terrible liar!” Sam told Harry, clutching his side and trying to control himself. “Dude, you called Hogwarts —” Sam started laughing again, all the stress of the day coming out in hysterical laughing.
“You called Hogwarts Hoggarts, then Sirius was Star!” Sam was laughing so hard he didn’t know how anyone understood him, but damn if he didn’t have actual tears in his eyes from it all.
Harry was an actual magical wizard. Sam might be too. Which meant that, if it was genetic, then John ‘I’ll destroy the supernatural world with my own bare hands’ Winchester had some dormant magic gene. Plus—
Sam’s new thought actually had him falling from his chair with renewed howls of laughter. Harry jumped up from his seat to stare down at him with a crooked smile of confusion, the same one Dean wore when he too stood up to stare at Sam.
Every attempt to compose himself failed miserably when his mind kept circling the same thought. Sam clutched his stomach, tears streaming down his cheeks, breaths coming in short bursts between bursts of laughter.
"C’mon, Sammy, pull it together," Dean teased, a grin playing on his lips, his eyes sparkling with amusement at very uncharacteristic behavior.
But Sam couldn't. It was as if all Sam’s stress and the tension just shifted to hilarity. Or his mind snapped and he’d gone complete cuckoo, they were both equally likely.
Harry eventually joined in, unable to resist the contagious laughter. Dean chuckled at Harry’s laughs, the ones that only came from watching Sam struggle to control himself, then he was laughing as well.
“Biggest bunch of dumbasses I ever met,” Bobby grumbled as he left the kitchen, having to walk around Sam’s body to do so.
That set off new laughter from Sam, who had been trying to grab his chair to pull himself back up to a more dignified position. Sam’s grip slipped and he was right back on his his ass.
“You’ve freaking cracked,” Dean said, offering a hand to pull Sam up to his feet. “Christ, Sammy. Get a hold of yourself.”
“Dude… dude…” Sam clutched Dean’s shoulder and needed him to have the same realization Sam did. Sam breathed in slowly, trying to calm down long enough for Dean to get the joke.
The ultimate joke. The freaking biggest punchline in the universe.
“Harry’s mom was a witch,” Sam said tightly, trying hard to not laugh again. When Dean didn’t seem to get the joke, Sam spelled it out for him. “Dad screwed a witch.”
“Wha…” Dean’s voice trailed off when he looked at Harry. Harry had bit his lower lip to hold in his laughter and his eyes were gleaming with what seemed like tears he was trying to refrain from shedding
“He actually met my mum while he was plotting to kill my dad,” Harry said, choked up from his laughter. “Sirius said he and Dad sent Mum to distract John and - and here I am.”
They all absolutely lost it then.
Dean laughed his ass off at the idea that Dad had went on a witch hunt and got distracted by some tail. How many times did Dean get his ass jumped for the same thing?
Sam laughed because it was too good, it really was. Not only did Dad possibly pass down some magic gene to him, but he actually procreated with someone he would sooner put a silver bullet in their heart.
And Harry? Harry was so bloody relieved that he just laughed.
Bobby couldn’t hear a damned thing on the game he turned on even with the TV at full volume. The only thing he could hear was the sound of three idiots laughing their asses off in the kitchen.
It didn’t matter though. Bobby kicked up his footrest and relaxed in his chair, listening to his boys laugh themselves stupider with a small grin on his face.