“Spell creature for me.”
“Okay so Ron’s bringing Hermione and we can’t sit with them, but our tickets—”
“Are awesome, freaking brilliant, super amazing!” Dean interrupted, snapping harder than he meant to. When Harry deflated and weaponized Sam’s puppy eyes against him, Dean rubbed his forehead and sighed.
Between Sam and Harry, Dean was going to lose his freaking mind.
Sam kept Dean up the night before, talking in his sleep. Dean threw a pillow at him, another pillow, then the actual alarm clock to get him to shut the hell up. Then Sam woke up all bitchy and decided he wasn’t going to the quidditch thing that Harry hadn’t shut up about it weeks.
Weeks.
It had been weeks of listening to Harry talk about quidditch and magic classes and ten tons of weird shit that Dean couldn’t wrap his mind around.
Magic? Sure. Dean had seen enough of the supernatural world to admit that there was always more to see. So kids being born with powers weren’t a big shock; hell, Sam was a psychic with Azazel AM tuned in his brain.
Quidditch? Whatever. Dean wasn’t a big sports guy, never watched enough to know what teams to root for. But Bobby would kick on ESPN once in a while and Dean would have a beer, some chips, and scream at the TV with him. If flying broomsticks made the kid happy, then screw it, Dean could get some chips and yell with him too.
It was the damn magic school and plane problem that was pissing Dean off. Oh, and the eighty freaking people that thought they got some sort of say in Dean’s brother’s life.
The magic school sent Harry a list of supplies he was supposed to buy on his birthday apparently. And in addition to the tickets for the Olympic version of Quidditch that Harry bought, Sam just let him buy his school shit too.
“What was I supposed to do? Tell him too bad, you’re not going?”
“Yeah, Sam, just like that!”
“I’m not Dad, dude.”
Which was real nice because it meant that Dean had to be the bad guy. He had been pushing it off, especially with the kid bouncing off the walls about the game, but he was going to have to sit him down soon and tell him magic school sounded like a death trap and he wasn’t going back.
Basilisks, they kept freaking basilisks in the school. Sure, Harry killed it with a sword, but they just replaced it with a bunch of dementors.
What was next? Demon teachers?
No.
Harry could go to high school, like a normal kid. Or he could be home schooled, Dean didn’t really care which, he just knew his brother wasn’t going back.
And if any one of the fifty people who thought they got a say in Harry’s life had a problem with it, they could kiss Dean’s ass.
Harry’s planning didn’t just include talking every damn day to the godfather that just got out of prison and didn’t seem real stable - it also included a bunch of owls going back and forth between Bobby’s house and Harry’s friend’s house. There had been one pretty memorable phone call, from Ron’s dad to Dean, trying to coordinate the game.
“HELLO, HARRY’S BROTHER! THIS IS VERY EXCITING!”
Dean winced and tossed his cell to Sammy, letting him handle the screaming voice.
The dude tried to get Dean and Sam and Harry all to go stay at his house. The godfather tried to get them to go stay at his house. Some chick even called Dean’s cell, politely asking for Harry, and the kid spent two hours on an international call before - surprise! - telling Dean that she also said the three of them could go stay at her house.
It was annoying as hell and Dean only begrudgingly agreed that they would stay the night before and after the match at Sirius’s house because Harry said nobody lived there.
Two nights, one game.
And Sam’s bitch ass was supposed to go as well, making Dean probably fifty times less on edge about the whole thing.
Sure, they survived a magical city just fine, but suddenly they were supposed to touch a cursed object and let it magically transport them all to London before - another surprise! - touching another cursed object to go to the game.
It was a lot, alright? So Dean thought he could be forgiven for snapping off at Harry when the kid rewound the only tape he had been playing for two weeks and started again about the game.
“Look, why don’t you go see if you can’t convince Sam to come with us?” Dean suggested, glancing at his watch. They had like five minutes before they were supposed to leave and Dean still had supplies to grab.
Supplies that Harry, who got all bent out of shape about firearms since he thought Dean was going to freaking shoot him, might not appreciate watching him pack in his duffel.
Harry nodded and then took off inside, his own backpack bouncing as he ran back in the house to try and convince Sam one more time to go with them.
Sam wasn’t sneaky, Dean knew he was up to some shit, but he couldn’t babysit both brothers.
“You gonna watch Sam while I’m gone?” Dean asked Bobby while he quickly loaded up on silver bullets, holy water, salt, and anything else he might need for a trip to crazy town.
Bobby stayed out of all the planning, saying that if Dean wanted his help he’d ask for it. Well, Dean was asking.
“You know I will,” Bobby said, backing up when Dean went to close the trunk of the Impala.
“And don’t forget the other thing,” Dean reminded him, keeping it kinda quiet since the kid was running back toward them.
“I ain’t old enough to forget it,” Bobby snorted.
Yeah, well, it was the sort of thing that merited being brought up more than once.
Sam had been the one to go chasing after Harry when he thought the whole birthday thing they planned was some really messed up trap to kill him for being a wizard. Sam said how Dean was shit at feelings and Sam could emphathize.
Maybe Dean wasn’t one for big emotional shows, but he knew better than to go telling a damn fourteen year old that ‘yeah, I figured it was your fault 107 people are dead’.
For Christ’s sake.
Sam might be new at the whole big brother bit, but Dean thought he gave him a better example to use than that. Always be honest when you had facts, evade when you didn’t.
“Are there monsters under my bed?”
“No, I checked twice.”
“When will Dad be home?”
“Look! I swiped a book from the library for you!”
It wasn’t hard. Especially since nobody had any facts at all to prove that Harry caused that crash. Even just looking at the kid made the whole thing seem unreasonable… he was all floppy-haired, puppy-eyed, and about as evil as Sam himself was.
Save Sam… kill him if you have to.
Dean spat angrily on the ground at the reminder of Dad’s last words to him. It was probably a good thing Harry never met him, Dean didn’t know for sure that Dad wouldn’t have put a silver bullet in his head on sight.
“Sam said he’s got research to catch up on and he’s really sorry but he’ll come next time,” Harry said as he ran back up to Dean. Harry hadn’t been nearly as sad about Sam cancelling as Dean thought he would be.
Part of Dean thought Harry would refuse to go with just him, but maybe Dean was looking too hard into it. Really, since they got back from Texas, Harry had been a little friendlier to Dean.
He still refused to let Dean spar with him when he and Sam slipped back in their modified training schedule, but Dean figured that was fair. The kid injured himself enough on his own, he didn’t need Dean’s help. And Dean told Sam to drop the shit with the guns once Harry had the basics down, he was getting sick of seeing the kid hold a gun.
Harry held a gun like Sam would hold the hand of a clown.
Sam’s other training was good though, Dean could see the proof of that standing in front of him. Harry wasn’t as pale as he had been and Dean thought he looked a little sturdier, with some wiry muscles like Sam had. Even the ‘nervous and trying not to show it’ smile was all Sammy.
Dean’s eyes flicked irritably to Bobby once more, receiving a nod in return.
It was two nights, how much damage could Sam do on his own? Sam had cooled his heels about picking up jobs, finally agreeing that maybe they should make giving Harry a normal life a priority. With mum on Azazel, Dean hoped that maybe Sam would start to really look in colleges to get back into.
Two nights.
Sam could do it. Harry could do it. Dean could do it.
Two nights.
Even with every nerve in his body screaming not to, Dean grabbed the little board game sized metal horse Harry bought.
Or convinced Sam to buy? Dean wasn’t real sure how that had played out. Dean had been busy in a bar with some chick, leaving Sam and Harry to do their own thing.
The thing did transport them straight from Bobby’s front yard to the house Sirius loaned them - loaned Harry, since anyone could see he was obsessed with the kid - but fuck if Dean wanted to return the same way.
“Oh, God.” Dean nearly fell on his ass when he was finished being pulled through a tube that defied any laws at all. It felt a lot like being twisted through a toothpaste cap and even Dean’s vision was blurred when his feet touched sweet, sweet, ground again.
Dean had to blink a few times, but when he could see straight again, he saw Harry didn’t look so hot either. From the green shade of his face, Dean shuffled back a step to avoid being puked on.
“You good?” Dean asked him, taking a chance to check out his surroundings.
It was like a mud room, or what Sam would probably call a foyer. Mud room was more appropriate though, since it was pretty damn filthy. It didn’t bother Dean, he had seen worse, lived in worse, paid to sleep in worse, but it made him wonder how long the house had been empty for.
There wasn’t much to see in the one room, just a main door behind them, another door in front of them. There was an umbrella st…
“Dude,” Dean was staring hard at what he first dismissed as an umbrella stand while Harry dug his walkie-talkie mirror from his backpack. “Is that a leg?”
It looked like a leg with pegs added to the calf, but Dean couldn’t think of anything with legs that huge or that thick-skinned.
“What?” Harry glanced over at the leg and pulled a face, at least confirming it wasn’t some normal shit everyone had. The magic mirror was one thing, if Harry pulled a leg out of his bag then they were going to have a talk. “Ugh, I think that’s a troll. Or, was, anyway…”
Dean and Harry both grimaced before Harry cleared his throat and called for Sirius on the mirror.
Sirius seemed like a decent enough dude. He clearly cared about Harry, called him every day to chit chat, but he also seemed like he belonged in a loony bin to Dean.
Bobby dug up a book on dementors after Harry said Sirius had been around them for twelve years straight. They weren’t unlike Shtriga, just nasty creatures that fed on souls. Dementors weren’t picky about whose souls they ate, but they were bound to other supernatural beings.
They also made a person think about their worst memories just from exposure, so Dean could see why a guy might be a little cuckoo after spending twelve years around them.
Sirius didn’t seem too messed up then when he answered Harry’s call though.
“Hey, we’re here,” Harry told him, grinning all happily like he always did when he called Sirius.
Dean didn’t get it, really. From what he’d picked up, just accidentally overhearing conversations between Harry and Sirius, Sirius only remembered that Harry wasn’t James, Harry’s dead dad, sometimes. And sometimes he would say shit like “Are you studying owls?” that would make Harry tell him he was fourteen.
But Harry was always pumped to talk to him.
Whatever.
Dean stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, the one that he had retired when he took Dad’s and pulled back out when he gave Dad’s to Harry.
It wasn’t some big thing like Sam and Bobby tried to make it into. Harry was a Winchester. Winchester’s belonged in denim jeans and leather jackets like strippers belonged in pasties and thongs.
And Harry looked good in the jacket, he had it on then because Sam told them there was a chance of rain coming in that night. Hell, if Harry weren’t talking to a wizard on a magic mirror about a creature inside the house he needed the wizard to talk to, he’d even look like the last owner of that jacket.
“Harry, what?” Dean shook off his thoughts, his muscles automatically tensing, when he clocked what Harry was saying. Harry glanced up at him, patiently waiting to see what Dean was reacting to.
Jacket or not, John Winchester never looked so patient with his oldest son.
“There’s something in here?” Dean pressed, automatically lowering his voice. “A creature?”
“Creature, yeah,” Harry told him. “With a K.”
Creature with a K, right.
And instead of having his brother, who hunted ‘creatures with a c’ for a living, take care of it, Harry called the half-crazy godfather.
“Do not shoot,” Harry told Dean with a hard look after Sirius said he’d take care of the kreature.
Ckreature?
That was why Sam should be there, so Dean wasn’t gripping his pistol and trying to play a damn spelling bee in his head while Harry opened the next door to get further in the house. Sam would know how someone would spell creature with a k so all of Dean’s focus could be on —
“What the fuck is that?” Dean whipped his gun out and aimed it at the freaking mini-monster that came skulking out of thin air to brandish a rusted knife at Harry. Dean snagged Harry’s jacket collar, but Harry had the mirror turned around and Sirius was already talking.
“Kreature, I order you to stay in the pantry while Harry is there, do you understand me?” Sirius’s voice had lost the friendly tenor it had when he talked with Harry; Sirius talked to that… whatever the fuck it was… like he hated him.
And the whatever it was sneered at Sirius’s face in the mirror with just as much dislike. It didn’t even seem to care much about Dean and Harry standing there - Dean with his gun loaded and aimed, Harry who flipped the mirror around to face himself quickly.
“Sirius, don’t - you can’t - he doesn’t need to be locked in a pantry,” Harry said in an urgent and almost panicked way.
Not that the whatever agreed with Harry, since it started shouting and nearly startled Dean into putting a bullet in its head. Dean’s finger stayed on the trigger, ready to pull if that knife got too close to his brother.
“OH, NO, IF NASTY MASTER SIRIUS WANTS KREATURE IN THE PANTRY WHILE HIS NASTY MUDBLOOD GODSON—”
Then Sirius started screaming.
“DON’T YOU DARE CALL HARRY THAT, YOU DISGUSTING BIT OF FILTH! YOU’RE A DESPICABLE LITTLE—”
“KREATURE WISHES HIS LOVELY MISTRESS WERE HERE TO SEE —”
Then a chick started screaming from somewhere.
“SCUUUUM! SCUM AND FILTH IN THE NOBLE HOUSE OF BLACK!!”
“Motel,” Dean decided, keeping his hand on Harry’s jacket collar. He started tugging the kid backward, the gun still aimed at the little dirty and wrinkled monster. Harry struggled against him and Dean didn’t relent.
“We can go upstairs, it’s quiet!” Harry yelled over the sound of everyone else’s screams.
Nope.
That place was cursed as hell and Dean wasn’t going to let his brother —
“God damn it,” Dean swore when Harry twisted just right then jerked forward. Harry ran through the room they were in - a living room, judging by the couch and chairs - and turned right, disappearing from Dean’s view.
Dean snatched the mirror Harry drooped in his left hand, keeping the gun still aimed at the snarling monster waving the knife around, and tapped under Sirius’s face twice with his thumb to shut him up.
It worked, the glass turned reflective again, and Dean kept his pistol in hand as he chased Harry’s footsteps.
Turn right, hallway.
Staircase, pass one hallway exit, up another flight.
Did that picture just curl its lip up at Dean?
Left off the second landing, halfway down that hallway.
Harry was waiting for him, skin a little pasty and sweaty. Harry shook his head while Dean slowly, hating every second of it, clicked the safety on his pistol and secured it inside his jacket once more. Dean did it casually though, as if it wasn’t killing him to add an extra seconds to his response time.
“Sorry, I needed to check my stuff,” Harry said, eyes looking a little frantic. “I couldn’t hear myself think, I didn’t fancy screaming over them. C’mon, nobody comes in here, I’ve stayed here before.”
“You said that about the house too,” Dean reminded him, following the kid anyway.
“Technically I said that there weren’t any people here,” the little smartass quipped. “Kreature is an elf and I think the lady screaming is Sirius’s mum’s portrait.”
An elf and a cursed painting kind of merited a warning, but Dean shut up about it for the moment. It wasn’t just the room that distracted him - damn, they had good taste in decor - but Dean knew he wasn’t the kid’s favorite person.
That was Sam.
“Spell creature for me,” Dean said, noticing the screams went silent when Harry kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. Dean walked the edges of the room, checking out the babes on bikes and the pictures that were hung up every few feet.
Harry dropped down on the floor beside a wooden trunk and opened it while he spelled out the word that had been bugging Dean.
“Kreacher is a house-elf and I reckon he’s gone a little mental here all alone,” Harry said next. “I can’t believe Sirius tried to lock him in a pantry… that’s sick.”
Dean made a sound of agreement, just letting the kid vent. If Dean grew up in a closet, he’d probably agree, as it was, Dean thought the little beast downstairs needed euthanized.
Harry went quiet and just pulled out books, black capes, and all sorts of random shit from the trunk while Dean checked out the rest of the room.
It wasn’t hard to pick Sirius out of the lineup in all the photos that were hung up. He looked younger, happier. There was another dude in most of the pictures, a grinning guy with geeky glasses and the messiest damn hair Dean ever saw. There were two other guys that made some appearances, then one with the red-head that Dean knew was Harry’s mom.
“Your mom was smokin’,” Dean whistled. She was too, all curvy and red-headed with a sweet little —
“Maybe, yeah, I dunno. Sirius said they partied a lot.”
Dean nearly choked on his own spit when Harry agreed with him in a distracted tone before he realized they were using smoking in two very different contexts. When Dean turned to tell Harry in no uncertain terms that he meant his mom was hot, Harry was frowning at a piece of old timey looking paper that his friend used to send him letters via owl.
“What’s that?” Dean asked.
“Er… summer homework,” Harry said, shrugging before stuffing it back inside his trunk. “It doesn’t matter, Hermione’ll let me copy her. I do it every year.”
Dean grinned and moved to go sit at the foot of the rumpled, but not disgusting, bed.
“Yeah? Not big on essays and shit?” he asked, thinking they had something to bond over. Dean had Sam carry him through school until Dean was old enough to drop out and get a GED.
School was Sam’s thing, Dean did the hunter thing.
“I mean… does anyone like writing essays?” Harry huffed, looking up at Dean with a tiny grin. “Hermione loves them, she writes them for fun, but I just never have my stuff in the summer so I usually have to copy her.”
“You know who else writes essays for fun? Sam,” Dean told him. “He wrote one for Dad one time about why we should get vaccinated as kids.”
“Did it work?”
“Sure did.” Dean grinned ruefully at the memory. “Sam got seven shots and never wrote Dad another essay again.”
“That’s… that sounds like Sam was punished for caring that you were healthy,” Harry said slowly, squinting like he was surprised that life was unfair.
“Nothing gets past you,” Dean said before throwing himself back on the bed, his arms folded under his head. There was a mirror stuck to the ceiling above the bed and Dean immediately rolled off it, landing on his feet and shaking his head.
“Nope. Nope. Not doing this,” he said quickly, feeling filthy. Dean could deal with a lot of shit, laying in someone else’s sleazy bed wasn’t it.
“Grab your shit, kid, we’re getting a motel room.”
“Or….” Harry looked at Dean and smiled just as nicely at him as he did Sam, which meant the little shit was about to say something he knew Dean wouldn’t like.
School might not have been Dean’s thing, but he wasn’t an idiot.
“We could go stay with Ron, his mum said we could. Then we can all portkey together tomorrow.”
The last thing Dean wanted to do was go from one nasty and haunted house to another. But Dean had never been able to resist the full on little-brother-pout that Sam trademarked and Harry weaponized.
Which was how Dean found himself cursing up a damn storm when he let Harry talk him into walking in fire.
And Dean stepped out of one - thankfully not damaging - fire and directly in another one.
A big ass fire that it seemed like Dean might have accidentally started.