“Shoot if you have to.”
“That was so awesome.”
Dean didn’t know what he expected when Harry kept going on and on about quidditch, but it wasn’t the bad ass competition they just watched. Hell, even two hours after the game ended and Dean’s blood was still pumping.
The kid was right; quidditch was awesome.
“Yeah?” Bill Weasley was grinning at Dean, his face lit up by the fire they were sitting in front of, cheeks flushed from the booze. “Not bad for some hocus pocus, eh?”
Dean chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. Alright, telling the little blonde douchebag that he wasn’t special just because he knew some hocus pocus could have been offensive to literally everyone who wasn’t Dean, but that kid was asking for a lot worse.
Just because Dean didn’t know what a mudblood was didn’t mean he didn’t know it was an insult when it was slung at Harry. The douchebag was lucky that Dean was a grown man and couldn’t kick his ass.
“That kid was an ass,” Dean said, Bill’s brother Charlie nodding in agreement.
Bill and Charlie were cool enough, really. They had sort of given Dean a crash course in magic and Harry-history the day before when Harry was too pissed at Dean to even be in the same room as him. The whole damn family was actually almost annoyingly nice. Like the red-headed and magical Brady Bunch.
Dean could see why Harry would like them all, so Dean tried hard to be polite. He even offered to get rid of the ghoul they kept in their attic, but apparently it was family.
The Brady Bunch probably didn’t have a ghoul in their attic.
But Dean had been pumped enough after the game ended that he let Harry convince him to stay the night at the campground with his friends. It worked out alright, as soon as Arthur and the kids went to bed, Bill broke out some booze and Charlie found some clover-scented cigars.
Dean didn’t usually have a cigar when he drank, but he didn’t usually drink with wizards either, so screw it.
The booze was good, company was good, cigar was good.
It was all good.
It kind of made Dean a little uneasy at how good it all was. It was supposed to be evil, magic was bad, all that. But damn if Dean wasn’t having a hell of a time anyway.
Dean let out a content sigh as he stretched out from where he was sprawled on the ground in front of the fire.
“Hey, so Harry does that thing where he chases the gold ball, right?” Dean asked after Bill refilled all their glasses.
Charlie was sitting cross-legged on the ground across from Dean, Bill in a chair between them with a view of the magical tent the others slept in. Dean had looked toward Bill for an answer, but Charlie answered.
“Seeker, yeah,” Charlie said. “He’s damn good too. My mate, Oliver, he was quidditch captain for Gryffindor and he sent me half a dozen letters gushing about Harry. I thought he was a bit in love with Harry, to be honest.”
“Yeah?” Dean grinned, his eyes crinkling, when he thought he was being freely handed some ammunition to tease his brother with. “Oliver, huh?”
Bill barked out a laugh, catching Dean’s gist immediately. Bill was an alright dude, a lot different than Dean expected. Anyone who broke curses for a living and looked damn good doing it was alright in Dean’s book. Plus, Bill was the oldest son in his family… he got it.
“Oliver was a bit too old for Harry,” Bill told him. “It’s Ginny who’s carrying a torch for your brother.”
“I dunno…” Charlie stifled a yawn and grinned just as wickedly as his brother was. “I’m thinking Ronnie’s going to have some problems this year. You lads see how Hermione was looking at Harry?”
“You mean when she could rip her eyes off Dean?” Bill asked, snorting in amusement. “I dunno where that scrawny kid the twins talked about went, but puberty is going to get that boy places.”
“Harry’s still skinny,” Dean said, shaking his head. “You should have seen Sammy when he was Harry’s age, all gangly and rail thin.”
Harry wasn’t as tall as Sam, he was closer to Dean’s height when he’d been fourteen. But Dean had always filled out his clothes just fine, a nice side effect of having a Marine Corporal for a father.
“It probably didn’t hurt that he spent this summer with access to food,” Bill said casually, his eyes stuck on the drink he swirled in his hand. “And I’m guessing nobody put bars on his windows, so a bit of exercise certainly helped.”
Dean’s eyebrows twitched while his mind tried to repeat those words, figure out if they were a joke or something.
“That’s not funny,” Dean snapped, irritated. There was already a bunch of bullshit about Harry ‘living with muggles’ (Dean heard those politicians, thanks). The last thing any of them needed was some sort of CPS case that would be impossible to clear up.
Dean Winchester was legally dead, a serial killer too. If CPS came knocking, it would be up to Sam and Bobby to make sure nobody tried to stick Harry in a foster home and Dean didn’t trust anyone with that job.
Some of those foster homes were rough, his brother wasn’t so much as stepping foot in one.
“It’s not funny, is it?” Bill agreed lightly. “But that’s what the twins swore up and down and sideways had happened.”
“I think I’ll call it a night,” Charlie said abruptly. He drained the rest of his glass and pushed himself to his feet. Dean thought he heard him mumble something about ‘not going to be an accessory’ on his way inside the tent, but Dean was a little preoccupied with his stare-off with Bill to care.
“You mean the kid’s aunt and uncle?” Dean guessed, gripping his glass tightly. “They - what? Couldn’t afford food?”
That wasn’t a crime. Half of Dean’s childhood - before he got old enough to hustle, good enough to steal - had been filled with memories of them never having enough money for food. Dad did what he could, used up his savings, the money from the insurance company that cashed out on Mom’s death. Dad picked up side gigs here and there, but sometimes there wasn’t a damn thing to do except pick up one package of ramen and try to split it three ways.
When Dean noticed that Dad skimped his portions so the boys could have more, Dean did the same for Sam.
It wasn’t a big deal, some families just couldn’t afford three meals a day. It was probably why Sam thought it was fine to skip meals, like he just thought that there would always be more. It was probably also why Dean didn’t skip meals, ‘cause he knew they weren’t a guarantee.
But those kind of thoughts weren’t anything Dean wanted or needed to have, not when he was talking about Harry.
“I thought that too,” Bill said, looking like it was another thing he just got.
Hell, give Dean red hair and a few more brothers and he was starting to think that the differences between him and Bill were pretty slim.
“But Fred and George said they asked Harry why he was locked up in a room with nothing to eat, looking half-dead, mind you, and Harry said his relatives didn’t like him.” Bill lifted a shoulder and grimaced before taking a long drink of the whiskey in his glass. “So I’m guessing they have plenty of money.”
Yeah, Dean would place the same guess. The kid said his relatives didn’t like him, didn’t like magic. He told the chick from the plane that they were bullies, he told Sam that he grew up in a closet.
“Fuck.” Dean finished off his second glass to try and soothe the anger bubbling up in his stomach. “Man, I’d like five minutes with those fucking people.”
Bill laughed and dropped to the ground to sit beside Dean. Dean held his glass up, Bill refilled it.
“Now you’re really part of the family,” Bill said, raising his glass to Dean’s. “Hating Harry’s relatives is basically tradition at this point. I suppose we’ll have to start being specific though, unless you think we’ll hate Sam too?”
“Sam? Nah.” Dean chuckled and stretched out. Harry wasn’t going back to his asshole relatives, he was getting food, he was fine. Dean didn’t need to find a way to… wherever the fuck they lived and kick their asses.
“Sam’s a geek, he’s hard to hate,” Dean said, meaning every word of it. Even when Dean wanted to hate his brother, he couldn’t.
Dean would kill for Sammy and he’d die for him; hating him just wasn’t possible.
“He good-looking too?” Bill asked, giving Dean a sly smile.
Too?
Now that was exactly what Dean’s night was missing.
There was good company, good booze, a cigar that Dean sort of forgot about but that had been good. And if Dean wasn’t reading the room wrong, it seemed like good sex might be on the table too.
“Depends on your type,” Dean said nonchalantly. He shifted his leg, letting it brush against Bill’s. When Bill’s hand moved quick, just resting it right above Dean’s knee, Dean sent a silent thank you to the universe.
It was hard picking up decent looking dudes on the road. Chicks satisfied Dean’s itches as much as anything, but, man, sometimes Dean wanted something different. Something it seemed like Bill with his broad shoulders, easy grin, and bright blue eyes was offering up.
“I like ‘em good-looking, adventurous…” Bill’s thumb began tracing patterns on Dean’s thigh, his hand inching upward. “That sound like Sam?”
“Hell no.” Dean finished his glass in one go and used the burn to push him on his knees, turning quickly and straddling Bill’s lap. Bill made the first move, but Dean wasn’t a pussy.
“Fuck, you’re forward,” Bill laughed, thrusting his hips up off the ground to prove his point. Bill grabbed Dean by the front of his shirt, Dean grabbed him by the back of his hair.
Their mouths met in a hard and messy clash that worked just fine for Dean. Chicks were great, but there was something about a rough fuck with a dude that kept Dean’s interest.
Chicks were soft; Bill was hard.
“Sphynx, three years ago,” Bill panted, referring to the scar that Dean was biting the edges of, just testing the waters. They had shed their shirts pretty quick, Dean was taking a minute to explore the upstairs before he moved down. Bill was doing the same thing, more with his hands than mouth, and Dean felt him tap a scar on his shoulder blade twice.
“Poltergeist with a grudge,” Dean said, mouthing slowly down Bill’s chest. “Little fucker —”
The rest of Dean’s story about the poltergeist he tackled when he’d been thirteen was drowned out by a horrible scream. It was high-pitched, terrified, and had Dean moving immediately.
Bill moved just as quick, his wand out and his body abruptly upright. His hair was a little fucked up, neither of them had a shirt on, but it only took Dean one more second to grab his gun from where his jacket had been tossed to the side.
“Over there,” Dean murmured, gun ready and eyes searching. That hadn’t been a scream of fun, the celebrations had been dying down by then anyway. That was a terrified scream, someone was hurting somewhere.
Bill looked in the direction that Dean did and when they found what had caused the scream, there were more screams joining the first.
“The fuck is that?” Dean asked, working hard to make sense of what he was seeing. There were bodies floating in the sky, doing weird shit like sloppy cartwheels and doing somersaults so quickly that it made Dean dizzy.
“Trouble,” Bill said grimly, looking toward where the laughter came from below the bodies in the air. When the crowd sounded like it came closer, Bill suddenly shoved Dean in the chest toward the tent.
“Shite. Shit.” Bill flipped his wand at his side, sending off something silver and then tried to shove Dean again. “Oi, get Harry and get the fuck out of here, mate. Have Charlie take you to—”
Just as Dean’s story had been washed away by a scream, Bill’s directions were masked by a sudden fire that erupted out in the woods that surrounded the camp site.
“Bill!” Arthur Weasley shoved his way out of the tent, face pale and grim. His eyes flicked once between where Bill stood without a shirt and toward where Dean stood in a similar shirtless state, but he shook his head and focused quickly on the riot it seemed like was breaking out. “What’s happening?”
“Looks like muggle torture.” Bill had to yell to be heard, the camp site was coming back to life, people were screaming and there were cracks like gunshots that were keeping every muscle in Dean’s body tight and strained. “Look.”
Arthur did look, and his wand flicked to his hand immediately. The man seemed a little cracked in the head to Dean before, but he was all business then when he saw the four bodies being flipped around in the air.
“Shacklebolt is two sites over, go wake him, quickly, Bill,” Arthur commanded his oldest son. “Dean, you need to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dean said, hardly noticing that Bill ran off immediately. “What’s going on?”
“Death eaters,” Arthur said, spitting the name like Dean might demons. “And I’m afraid that most of them are well-aware that Harry Potter’s muggle brother is here.”
Dean clicked the safety off his gun, his finger loose on the trigger.
“I’m not leaving my brother behind.”
Arthur ran toward the riot. Charlie ran after his dad once he pushed his way out of the tent. Dean went to wake the fifty freaking teenagers up, get their asses moving and away from the fire that was spreading outside.
“Hey! Wake the hell up!” Dean yelled inside the room where the two girls, Hermione and Ginny, were sleeping and only moved to the next room once he was sure they were awake.
The boys’s room had more beds in it, and Dean started at the bed where his brother was sprawled out, limbs tangled with his friends he bunked with. Dean shook Ron’s arm hard on his way to kick one of the twins to get them all moving.
“Wake up,” Dean snapped, moving with purpose. “I want shoes on and wands in hands right the fuck now!”
Dean counted his charges quickly - six. There were six kids in the tent and that was how many kids Dean planned on getting out of the campgrounds without a single injury. If Dean was going to have to fight his way out though, it wouldn’t hurt matters if any of the kids could use their freaky magic powers to help.
“Dean?” Harry sat up and rubbed his eyes, barely catching the shoe Dean threw at him. “What’s going on?”
“Some sort of riot,” Dean said, leaving out the ‘muggle torture’ and ‘death eater’ part. “I want you all to have shoes —”
There was an explosion that shook the tent, causing one of the girls to scream from the other room. Dean cursed silently and snatched his duffle bag from where it had been in the corner of the room. Dean also threw Harry’s backpack at him, nodding when he saw the four boys were all awake, alert, and on their feet.
“Fuck your shoes, let’s go,” Dean said, slipping in his role with ease.
The boys trooped behind Dean, Harry digging in his bag for the wand that Dean wanted in his hand in the next five seconds.
“Dean!” Harry slid to a stop in the little living room part of the magic tent. The kid had one shoe on, one off. Dad’s old jacket was on about as crooked as anything, but it was Harry’s wide eyes that had Dean sighing.
Rule one of hunting: if it can go wrong, it will.
“My wand isn’t here,” Harry said.
Dean checked that the other five had their wands. They could be tired, they could be scared, but they had to be armed.
“We’ll find it later,” Dean told Harry, making plans as he went. He passed his pistol to Harry, clicking the safety back on as he passed it. “Safety’s on, you shoot if you have to, got it?”
Harry hesitated and it wasn’t a time for hesitations.
“Harry!” Dean snapped his name, getting Harry’s attention back on him and off the gun. “You shoot if you have to, got it?” he repeated.
Harry was shit with a gun, but he wasn’t walking around unarmed.
“I - got it,” Harry said.
Dean nodded and dug for his revolver while he checked outside the tent that it was clear enough to lead the kids out. It was chaos, a hundred times worse than it had been when Dean went inside the tent for the kids.
The fire was spreading, filling the air with thick smoke to the point where it was difficult to make heads or tails of anything. There were people screaming, bodies still flipping in the air, and Dean just had time to snag his jacket off the ground before it was trampled by a dude running through the campsite screaming for someone named Mary.
“Alright, we stick together and we get to the entrance gates, understood?” Dean instructed the kids. He looked at the twins, the oldest of the group, and pointed at their little sister. “Wands in one hand, your sister in the other. We get separated, you scream my name, understood?”
The goofballs that had been making jokes and talking about pranks the entire day were solemn when they each took a side of their sister and did exactly as Dean said.
“You two, hands,” Dean told Ron and Hermione. “Same thing. Aim for the gate, scream if you lose me.”
“Um… we- we aren’t really supposed to use magic outside of school,” Hermione said, her voice shaking just enough for Dean to remember that they were kids… untrained, dressed in their pajamas, and depending on Dean to get them out of there unharmed.
“Are you supposed to die outside of school?” Dean asked bluntly. “No? Okay, so if anyone attacks you then you use whatever magic you gotta to get away. Harry, you’re with me.”
When nobody else had any complaints, Dean grabbed Harry’s left hand with his right - Dean had good aim in either hand, Harry could barely hit a target with his right hand - and pulled them out in the night.
It was a freaking disaster almost immediately.
“Are those- muggles?” Hermione asked, voice high pitched and panicked when she saw the bodies in the air. It was sick, especially since the bodies were close enough to see it was a family, one with two little girls that were unconscious and being flipped around until their nightgowns were showing their bodies.
“Don’t look, move,” Dean ordered Hermione. Dean couldn’t do jack about those people right then, one mission at a time. “Ron, pull her by the hair if you have to.”
Dean tugged Harry north, sending glances over his shoulder to make sure the other kids were behind him. When Dean got sick of doing that, he pulled back and let Hermione and Ron take the lead.
“Keep heading north,” Dean told them. “And for the love of God, if anyone can magic up a flashlight now’s the time to do it.”
“I - yes.” Hermione and Ron flicked their wands in front of Dean, the three siblings doing the same behind him. Dean was pretty sure they were using Latin for their magic, but he didn’t have the ear for language like Sam did.
“I’m so kicking Sam’s ass when we get home,” Dean complained to Harry. “If he’s not spending this weekend having the best sex of his life, I’ll kill him.”
Because when Dean was in a foreign country, surrounded by witches and wizards, trying to get half a dozen kids away from a full-scale riot, that was when he expected Sam to be by his side. The only excuse Dean was going to accept was sex, only because God knew Sam needed to get laid.
“Your priorities are so messed up,” Harry breathed.
Yeah, probably.
The camp grounds were too packed with people fleeing from fire, flinging magic spells, and screaming for Dean to get his group through the grounds on the path. The west side of the forest put them closer to whatever group of sickos had the bodies in the air, but further from the fire and trampling crowds.
Dean liked his odds against some asshole with a wand more than he did fire. You couldn’t put a bullet in fire, but Dean would shoot any mother fucker that tried to keep him from getting those kids to safety.
“Dean!”
They had just entered the forest when one of the twins yelled Dean’s name. Dean turned on the spot and cursed loudly when he saw that they had been separated somehow, probably because it was dark and smoky and even the lights on the wands weren’t making a big difference.
“North!” Dean yelled, squinting to try and find the tall twins. It was freaking hopeless, Dean needed to get Harry and his friends somewhere safe then go back for the others.
No offense to those kids, but Harry was kind of Dean’s top priority.
“This is bad,” Hermione was whispering, leading the way a little too slowly for Dean’s comfort. “This is very - ow!”
Hermione tripped on a damn root and Ron quickly helped her back to her feet.
“Are you alright—”
“Careful, Granger. They’re hunting muggles, you know.”
Dean whipped his revolver to the left, just in time to aim it between the eyes of the little blonde douchebag that had been screwing with Harry before the game. The kid didn’t look so cocky with a barrel between his eyes, he stumbled backward and lost what little color he had to his face.
“Hermione is a witch,” Ron said, sounding real satisfied by the fear in the other kid’s eyes.
“And you’ve met my brother, right?” Harry added, that Winchester sass shining brightly. “You called him a filthy muggle, remember?”
“I…” The kid’s eyes couldn’t be more terrified and Dean lowered the gun, not actually trying to make some kid piss himself even if he was a little dick.
“Get the hell out of here before I change my mind,” Dean said, growling the words because it seemed like Harry really hated that kid.
The kid didn’t have any more smart ass comments to make, he just turned tail and booked it.
Dean didn’t know if a riot during a sporting event was considered not a big deal or not, but he still fought back a grin while Harry gripped his wrist tightly to stay standing while he lost his shit.
“Beautiful,” Harry laughed, howling the words. “Oh, that was worth every cent I spent on tickets.”
“I might be able to produce a patronus right now,” Ron said, apparently an agreement to Harry’s giddiness. “‘You’ve met my brother, right?’ Bloody hell, Harry, your brother’s the best.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get out of here before I have to actually shoot someone,” Dean said, biting his cheek to keep from smiling.
It would be a really bad time to smile, even if the sounds of the riot had quieter and Dean couldn’t see any bodies floating through the trees that covered them. There were still three more kids that Dean needed to find, six total he needed to get out of there.
“I hope that family is okay,” Hermione said while they continued heading north, moving briskly. “Those poor kids.”
“Dad’ll be out there helping,” Ron assured her. “I just hope they catch those slimy death eaters.”
“What’s that?” Dean asked, having heard the term twice then.
“Death eaters?” Ron looked over his shoulder and blinked at Dean. “Uh… they’re just followers of You-Know-Who, Dad said there’s still plenty of them that avoided Azkaban.”
“You-Know-Who?”
“Voldemort,” Harry said, actually being helpful. The kid wasn’t laughing anymore, he looked bothered. “Those people starting the fires and torturing that family are his followers?” he asked Ron.
“Reckon so,” Ron shrugged. “Ten galleons says Malfoy’s dad is one of them. I hope Dad catches him, it’ll give us something else to heckle Malfoy about, eh?”
“I just hope they - what was that?” Hermione had good instincts, she heard the rustling in the bushes to their left at the same time Dean did. Dean shoved Harry behind him some and had his gun aimed again.
“Who’s there?” Dean asked roughly. There wasn’t a reply, just another rustling sound of someone in the bush. “Hey! Dick bag, I’m talking to you!”
Nothing, and then —
“MORSMORDRE!”
Dean knocked Harry on his ass when he shoved him backward, away from the green light that shot upward from the bush. It didn’t touch any of them, just went straight up to the sky through a clearing of trees.
“What the — ?” Ron’s voice cut off in a strangled gasp while they watched the green light take shape.
It became a skull, made up of what looked like emerald stars, with a serpent sticking out from its mouth like a tongue. As they watched, it rose higher and higher, blazing in a haze of greenish smoke, etched against the black sky like a new constellation.
The screams that had quieted hit full volume again. The only difference Dean could see was the appearance of that skull, so he doubted if it meant anything good.
“Harry, Harry, get up.” Hermione had dropped Ron’s hand to grab Harry by his shirt collar, suddenly pulling him hard with desperation. “Harry, you have to go. Go, come on!”
“Woah, what’s happening?” Dean asked her. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s - it’s You-Know-Who’s sign,” Hermione said, pale as fuck. “The Dark Mark.”
“That’s great, what does it—”
Dean didn’t even get to ask his question before a series of loud pops, too soft to be a proper gunshot, went off and the clearing they were in went from having four people in it to twenty-four.
And they were surrounded.
Dean whirled around, and in an instant, he registered one fact: Each of those witches had a wand out, and every wand was pointing right at himself, Harry, and the other two.
Without pausing to think, he ordered them, “GET DOWN!”
Dean flew a hand out to knock Harry right back on the ground and Harry pulled Ron and Hermione down with him.
“STUPEFY!” roared twenty voices — there was a blinding series of bright flashes and that was the last thing Dean saw before everything went suddenly black and silent.
The next thing Dean became aware of was Harry losing his God damned mind.