For Whom the Bell Tolls

August 28

Harry pulled on the chaffing restraints that had his hands tied behind his back for what felt like the millionth time in just as many days.

It was as pointless then as it had been the first time, more so from how horribly weak Harry felt.

When the demon left Sam’s body and Harry was freed, he swore he would really put an effort into working out like Sam did every day. It made Harry feel mildly better that Jo Harvelle, who was older and probably stronger than Harry, was just as stuck.

Though Jo being there at all didn’t make Harry feel great.

It had started so strangely that Harry didn’t even realize Sam was possessed at first.

They went inside a restaurant and Sam was a little off, but Harry thought he was just tired. Harry was tired, so Sam had to be. They ordered food, Sam didn’t eat.

Then Sam started being cruel and Harry had, like an idiot, wasted time having his feelings hurt.

“You know you’re holding us back, right?” Sam asked Harry when they got back in the car and Sam peeled out of the lot with his tires squealing.

“What?” Harry looked at Sam, who had been nothing but understanding so far, and felt his stomach twist up. Was that what Harry was doing? Holding his brothers back? Sure, they didn’t seem to work as many cases as Harry got the feeling they did before he arrived, but he thought that had been by choice?

Sam glared hatefully at Harry, a look that Harry had never actually seen on Sam’s face before. That hurt more than his words, which were barbed and cold.

“People are dying because we’re wasting time babysitting,” Sam said.

Harry swallowed and ran his fingers over the cuffs of the leather jacket that Dean gave him, the one that didn’t fit but Harry still liked to wear.

“So - so you think I should go back to Hogwarts?” Harry asked, forcing his voice to stay even despite the hurt that was rocking through him.

“I think,” Sam pushed on the accelerator so hard that Harry was pushed back against his seat, “you should go to Hell.”

Harry didn’t understand what had changed between them, only that something obviously had. Harry had been joking when he told Sam he wasn’t going to talk to him when they got back to Bobby’s, Harry thought Sam knew that?

Or did he only know that when it was Dean who teased him?

Harry’s first hint - that probably should have been his third hint by that point - was when he tried to apologize for what he said and Sam rolled his eyes.

“I really hate kids,” Sam sighed. Harry didn’t even get a chance to process that before Sam reached over and grabbed Harry hard by the hair.

Harry yelled when Sam slammed his head against car door - once, twice, Harry blacked out before he felt the third hit.

When Harry came to, his bag was gone and he was tied up in a chair across from Jo Harvelle.

“Howdy,” Jo said flatly, “welcome to the party.”

The party, as it turned out, was not much fun.

Jo told Harry that Sam was possessed by a demon when he first woke up. It was a selfish thought, but Harry was so relieved by that.

It wasn’t Sam who said those hateful things, just a demon. Jo said that Sam tricked her by saying Harry was hurt and he needed her help before she too was knocked out and woke up tied to a chair in a dark room.

They both tried struggling out of the ropes on their wrists and ankles at first. When that got them no where, they screamed.

Harry screamed until he felt faint with the effort and his chest was heaving. All of his thoughts had been muddled for a while, a concussion, Jo told him when he said as much.

“Where do you think Sam is?” Harry asked Jo after a long time passed and the silence between them began to feel ominous.

“Sam or the demon bitch riding him like a human taxi?” Jo asked.

Harry winced and had been glad Jo couldn’t see it with as dark as it was.

“Since they’re one and the same now…” Harry hedged.

Jo theorized that the demon was taking Sam to get Dean, or maybe it was burning down all the Five Guys in the States. Harry didn’t know what that meant, told her so, and Jo lectured him about proper hamburgers.

It was daft, but it helped Harry take his mind off the rather crummy circumstances. Or, it did, until Sam returned.

When the door rolled up the first time - Jo provided a word for the strange cell they were locked in. It was a storage unit.

Harry blamed the concussion for the confusion he felt as he tried to decide if being storage was worse or better when tied to a chair instead of being locked in a cupboard.

Probably worse.

“Hi there.” Sam smiled at them in a very creepy way. It wasn’t Sam’s smile, but it was.

Harry’s head ached.

“Let us go, you bitch,” Jo snarled immediately.

Harry clenched his eyes shut when Sam - not Sam, the demon - back handed Jo with a loud crack.

“Let’s try again,” Sam said sweetly when Jo only spat a mouthful of blood toward his boots. Sam turned to Harry and Harry tried to lean away, anything.

That wasn’t Harry’s brother. It wasn’t.

It just looked like his brother.

“It’s time to call big bro,” Sam said. It took Harry a second to understand that he meant Dean and Harry bared his teeth in a snarl of his own.

It was one thing to kidnap Jo, but Harry wasn’t going to help the demon trap Dean too. Harry didn’t understand why his brothers seemed to be targets for a bunch of demons, but he was sure his brothers were at least on the right side of the war.

“Piss off,” Harry said. “Get out of my brother and find your own body.”

“They can’t because they’re dead and they can’t just accept that what’s dead should stay dead!” Jo tacked on.

When Sam stepped up to Harry with a smile, Harry braced himself for a hit that didn’t come.

“Little Sammy is crying how I can’t hit you because - what?” Sam cocked his head for a second and his smile turned mean. “Oh. Sammy thinks it won’t bother you to be hit. Was your last family so mean, Harry?”

Harry scowled at the rather pointed and childish insults and didn’t dignify them with a response.

What a thing to say though, especially in front of Jo.

“Here’s the thing, Harry.” Sam dropped to one knee in front of Harry, bringing them face to face. He - it? - pulled a gun from one pocket that Harry flinched at and a cell phone from the other pocket.

So it was either call Dean, help the demon trap and probably kill him, or be killed himself. As much as Harry didn’t want to die, he didn’t know that the demon wouldn’t kill him anyway.

That wasn’t the demon’s plan though.

Harry let out an involuntary and pained noise when the demon raised the gun and pressed the barrel to the side of Sam’s head.

“You can call big brother, tell him where to meet me, or I put a bullet in Sammy’s head,” it - Sam - said. Sam’s usually warm hazel eyes flashed and his entire eyes turned black before he blinked and they were normal again. “After that, because this body will keep going until I’m finished, baby, I’m going to torture pretty little Jo nice and slow. Have big brothers introduced you to porn or should I do that too?”

Harry wasn’t so naive to not understand what was being implied and he frantically glanced at Jo. Jo was brave, fearless, and she shook her head no at him from behind Sam’s back.

But it wasn’t a real decision, was it?

“Fine, I’ll call him,” Harry agreed in a rush. He tried to sound scared, play up his younger age, but he was thinking as quickly as he could.

Dean was smart and - depending on how long they had been gone - he was probably already worried. It shouldn’t be hard for Harry to say something to let him know it was a trap.

Sam told Harry exactly what to say and laid the phone on Harry’s knee while he moved to put the gun against Jo’s head to keep her quiet.

Dean answered on the first ring, proving to Harry that he must be worried about them.

“Sam? What the hell, man?”

Harry had to swallow to make his throat work and he worked hard to sound casual so Jo didn’t pay the price because Harry couldn’t act.

“Dean, hey, it’s me,” Harry said. He kept his eyes on the gun, refusing to allow even a quiver of his tone to get Jo hurt. “We need your help.”

There was a beat of silence and then Dean came through perfectly calmly.

Dean didn’t really do calm though, not that Harry had seen. Dean did a lot of angry, hurt once, and happy a few times… never calm.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“We got in a wreck,” Harry said, just as he was told to. “Sam’s in the hospital, Santa Fe General.”

“How about you, kid? Are you hurt?”

Dean sort of growled that last word and Harry felt a rush of warmth flow through him. Dean had been playing calm for the call, maybe guessing immediately that something was wrong, but the thought of Harry being hurt made him slip up.

It was bad timing, but it did give Harry a bit of comfort.

“I’m better than Malfoy when we saw him last weekend.”

Harry was fine; a lot scared, not going to admit that, but physically fine. Also, if Dean could figure it out, there was a gun to someone’s head.

But everything was ‘fine’.

“Oh, hey!” Harry saw Sam‘s hand beginning to drop the gun and he didn’t know for sure if Dean understood that he would be driving to a trap or not. “Can you do me a favor? Can you call Sirius? You know how he gets when he hasn’t heard from me in a while.”

Dean couldn’t call Sirius, Harry wouldn’t ask him to. But that had to be suspicious enough to niggle at Dean’s brain along with the information about it being a few days since Harry spoke with Sirius. Harry was judging time by the feeling of hunger that he ignored; the Dursleys really did train him well for being kidnapped. If that feeling was to be trusted, it had been maybe three days.

“Of course,” Dean agreed breezily, as if there was nothing abnormal about the request at all. “You hang tight, kid. I’m gonna be there real soon, okay?”

Harry’s eyes stung and he nodded before remembering Dean couldn’t see him. Sam was headed for the phone and Harry only had one more second.

“Alright,” he said. “Dean! Hey,” Harry’s eyes swam, “I’m sorry… about before.”

Nothing put things in clarity for Harry quite like thinking both his brothers might be dead by the end of the day.

Sam snatched the phone and hung up before Dean could reply. As soon as he left, Harry slumped miserably in his chair.

“Hey, Harry?” Jo’s voice was soft and pitying when she broke the silence. Harry hummed in response, too wrung-out to really talk.

“Dean’s a real good hunter,” Jo said. “That bitch isn’t gonna hurt one hair on his head.”

Dean was a good hunter, but so was Sam. And it was Sam’s body with an actual demon inside of it.

“Want me to keep talkin’ or let you work yourself up in some sorta panic attack?” Jo asked when Harry didn’t respond to her. “My mom’s always sayin’ I can talk the ear off corn.”

“Talk, if it’s not a bother.” Harry said quietly, imagining his two brothers fighting until one of them was actually dead.

“Okiedoke. What should we talk about?” Jo’s chair shifted around, scraping the concrete floor. “Wanna talk about how I don’t think I’ve got much of a crush on Sam anymore?”

Despite the absolute horrid conditions they were in, Harry managed a weak snort of amusement.

“Maybe we should just talk about hamburgers again,” Harry said, not wanting to talk about Sam at all.

Harry just had to hope that Dean would know what to do… they would both be fine… they’d all be fine.

Harry didn’t know how much time had passed while he sat in the dark with Jo, but after what felt like maybe six hours after Sam left - was he dead? was Dean? would Dean bring Bobby who also might be dead? - Jo let out a triumphant whooping sound.

“YES!”

Harry squinted just enough to see Jo waving a hand free before she quickly went to work untying the other knots that held her in her chair.

“How’d you do that?” Harry asked, his voice a raspy croak. He was thirsty, hot, and nauseous. Was it September yet? Were his brothers safe?

“Long fingernails,” Jo said cheerily. “I knew they’d come in handy eventually.”

Harry didn’t understand how she sounded so peppy, either she was deranged or Jo spent a lot of time being held hostage.

“Is this your first kidnapping?” Harry asked her suspiciously. “You don’t seem very upset about any of it.”

Of course, it wasn’t Jo’s brothers who were probably killing each other. But Harry expected some sort of miserable camaraderie between himself and Jo, not her pretending as if it were just another day.

“I’ve been huntin’ on my own these past few weeks, you start to get used to the weird,” Jo said airily. “Let me get my feet then I’ll —”

Jo was cut off by a loud yell, coming from outside the storage unit. It was familiar, sent a thrill of relief through Harry, and sounded panicked as could be.

“HARRY!”

“It’s Dean!” Harry said, almost laughing he was so relieved. Dean wasn’t dead, he was there, he probably had a gun, and Harry could leave. “DEAN! IN HERE!” he yelled back.

When Harry wasn’t loud enough, Jo began yelling as well.

“IN HERE!” she screamed.

But she was loud, wasn’t she?

They both screamed until they could hear Harry’s brother just outside the metal rolling door.

“Stand back, I gotta shoot the lock off!” Dean’s voice came through, confident, in command.

“We’re tied to chairs, but sure!” Jo yelled.

Harry couldn’t see it, but he thought he heard Jo roll her eyes. He supposed if you spent multiple days tied up in a dark room with someone else, you start to pick up on things like that.

There was a sudden gunshot, one that made Harry’s ears ring as it ricocheted off metal. Another gunshot, more ringing.

And then the door rolled up and Harry was momentarily blinded by sunlight. When Harry squinted and his eyes adjusted, he could see Dean standing in the doorway. Even if Dean wasn’t as tall as Sam, was nowhere near as tall as Hagrid, Harry thought Dean was the tallest person he had ever seen before in that moment.

“Hey, kid.” Dean spared Jo a short nod as he strode toward Harry and immediately went to work on the knots that held Harry’s wrists behind his back. “Next time you’re pissed off at me, can you just slam some doors or something? This is just dramatic.”

Harry knew Dean was trying to make a joke, but he couldn’t laugh.

Literally.

Harry was exhausted and his legs were shaking when he tried to stand up.

“You sit, let me get Jo then we’ll get the hell out of here, huh?” Dean said as he carefully put Harry right back on his chair.

“Where’s Sam?” Harry asked once he found some of his voice again. Screaming had made it scratchy and probable dehydration made it sound puny, but Dean understood him anyway.

“Sam? He’s with Bobby,” Dean said, a little too casually, while he made short work of the knots around Jo’s ankles. In the light, Harry could see that Jo looked terrible. She had a split in her lower lip and a handprint shaped bruise on the side of her face.

Not that she seemed overly bothered about it.

“You know he’s got a demon in him, right?” Jo asked, stretching one newly freed leg out.

“Yup,” Dean said shortly. He untied her other ankle, stood up, and clapped his hands together. “Who’s hungry?”

Harry had it right all those weeks ago when he first met his brothers…

They were completely mental.

Except Dean sort of… made a fuss over Harry… which, if Harry had to pick something, might have been a silver lining to the whole thing, even if it made Harry feel immature.

It just reminded him of Mrs Weasley fretting over everyone when they returned from the Quidditch World Cup, that was all.

Dean practically carried Harry to his car and had a pillow and blanket laying in the back seat along with a bottle of water that Harry gulped down. Jo got settled in the passenger seat and they must have used an extraordinary amount of energy being demon hostages because Jo asked Dean to take her home and neither of them woke up until they arrived at the Roadhouse.

Ellen flew out the doors while Harry was scooting upright and she had Jo out of the car and in her arms within a second.

Usually, Harry would feel jealous over displays like that. When Harry boarded the train for Hogwarts, and when he returned, he would see parents and children clinging to each other and it would tug at him.

Hermione said it was a normal feeling to have, when Harry confided that he was worried he was just a hateful and jealous person. But…

Harry watched Ellen and Jo hug and he didn’t feel jealous at all. Harry was happy for Jo, just as happy as he was when Dean suggested they ‘grab some grub for the road and get home’.

Neither Jo nor Ellen would let Harry leave without hugging the life from him though. And as much as Harry appreciated everything Jo did while they were stuck in that storage unit, he did not appreciate the return of her flirty-teasing.

“Maybe I’ll give up on men ‘til you get all grown up,” Jo said, batting her lashes at him.

It had been cuter before Sam - the demon - bruised her face. It was still enough to make Harry blush, even if he felt rather fond of Jo after the whole ordeal.

“You’re kidding,” Harry said, ineffectively swatting her hand off his arm. “You use fingernails as a weapon, Jo. I’m properly terrified of you.”

“Atta boy,” Ellen chuckled. Her eyes were wet and her hand hadn’t strayed from Jo’s body even once while Jo told her what happened. Even when she gave Dean a plastic sack full of styrofoam containers, she had a hand on Jo’s elbow. “You ever need anything and you call me, okay, sweetie?”

Harry agreed and then huffed indignantly when Jo called him her hero as he got back in the car with Dean.

“She called you her hero,” Dean teased him.

“I literally just sat in a chair for… how long has it been?” Harry asked as he immediately began digging in the bag of food they were given.

Unsurprisingly, the boxes had hamburgers and chips in them. Harry got the feeling that it must be the main meal of the Roadhouse, based on Jo’s very strong opinions about them.

“About five days,” Dean said. He glanced over at the containers hopefully. “Any pie in there?”

There was, actually.

Harry ate about half of his food, tried a bite of the apple pie that Dean raved about, then fell asleep.

Sitting in a chair for five days, doing nothing but screaming and thinking about his brothers, turned out to be exhausting.

Dean pulled in the drive at Bobby’s but instead of going to the house, he followed it down a new gravel addition to the trailer that Bobby added. Harry was interested to see how different the trailer looked already, with new wooden steps that led to the recently repainted door.

It just wasn’t as interesting as seeing Bobby standing in the lawn between his house and Dean’s, casually dropping something in a metal barrel full of fire.

“What’s he doing?” Harry asked, uneasy about that as he was Sam’s absence. Dean said Sam was with Bobby, but there was Bobby and no Sam.

“Burning evidence,” Dean said, his face momentarily going clouded with something unhappy before he shook it off and grinned at Harry. “Think you can handle those steps, hero, or should I carry you?”

Harry wanted to ask about the burning evidence bit, especially when he squinted and thought those were Sam’s clothes being burned, but Dean distracted him.

“Oh, piss off,” Harry said without heat. Harry had stood just fine outside the Roadhouse while they talked with Ellen. Harry already felt better, really. Just eating, drinking, and flexing his sore limbs had been an undeniable boost. Even his headache was gone, though Harry winced when he touched the side of his head and felt a decent sized lump.

That single wince was all it took for Dean to decide that Harry couldn’t be trusted up the three steps to his new house.

“It’s a shame you can’t walk, cause these stairs are just perfect.” Dean sounded pleased with himself as he had Harry literally thrown over his shoulder. Harry made an indignant noise, but Dean didn’t relent and he carried Harry clear inside the trailer.

Harry blinked in surprise.

Didn’t Sam say someone had been murdered in there and it was disgusting? If he had, it wasn’t anymore.

The front door connected to a large living room that was clean and airy with the windows open and a breeze mixing with a new paint smell. The walls were a fresh and clean light blue shade that was sort of matched by the cushy looking navy blue sofa and matching recliners.

“Couch or bed?”

Harry didn’t hear Dean, as distracted as he was by a photo hanging on the wall just by the door they walked in. Harry had no idea where it came from, but it was one of two decorations that he saw -

In a simple wooden frame was a photo of Harry, Sam, and Dean out behind Bobby’s house. Judging by where they were standing, it must have been when they were trying to teach Harry how to shoot a gun.

All three of them were laughing about something, Harry couldn’t remember what.

Just below that picture was a wooden key rack… it said home on it.

“Kid, hey.” Dean jostled Harry’s leg, taking his attention off the key rack. “You’re not getting any lighter. Am I dropping you off on the couch or your bed?”

“My bed?”

Was Harry’s concussion not actually better? His thoughts felt tangled and muddied again.

Dean grunted and Harry got a reverse tour of Dean’s house - but the picture was of Harry, Dean, and Sam… and the key rack said ‘home’ - when Dean took a right off the living room, down a hallway painted the same light blue, and stopped in front of a white door.

“You and Sam have to share a bathroom, but Sam’s good about keeping his crap put up,” Dean told Harry as he walked in the bedroom and then carefully stood Harry up in front of him. “You can decorate or whatever if you want, I’m gonna put nerd shit in Sam’s room.”

Dean kept talking, but Harry didn’t actually hear a word he said. Harry looked around the modest sized room and touched the lump on his head to ensure he wasn’t dreaming.

It was one thing to be given a room to sleep in at Bobby’s house. It was kind and Harry was grateful, but…

But Harry had a bedroom he could decorate and the key rack said home.

When Dean finally left Harry alone, the first thing Harry did was creep through the bathroom that supposedly connected his room to Sam’s. Harry was quiet, unreasonably nervous - if Sam was there, the demon wouldn’t be, it would just be Sam again.

The bathroom that connected their bedrooms distracted Harry for a moment. More specifically, the floor of the shower distracted Harry.

Was that blood?

Sam’s or —

“Burning evidence.”

Did Sam hurt someone?

Not Sam.

Did the demon hurt someone? Like the one that used Michaela to crash an airplane? Was Sam’s usually kind face - “You’re holding us back.” - the last thing someone saw?

Harry swallowed and avoided looking too closely at his peaky reflection in the mirror before quietly pushing open the door that would lead to Sam.

Sam’s room was dark, with blinds drawn, but Harry clutched the door tightly while he squinted at the lump curled up in a ball on the bed. Harry didn’t want to wake him, he just watched until Sam rolled over and Harry saw his face to confirm it was him.

And then Harry went in search of some paper.

Dear Professor Dumble McGonagall,
I will not be returning to Hogwarts this year as I’ll be staying in the States with my family.
Thank you for everything,

Harry paused, holding the pen thoughtfully for a second. With nothing to lose, he scratched out the new signature he would be using:

Harry Potter-Winchester