For Whom the Bell Tolls

October 2

Harry stayed up late until both of his brothers fell asleep. Dean had tried to ‘call dibs on’ the sofa, but Harry beat him to it. Dean scoffed when Harry made up an excuse to take the sofa, claiming he wanted to work on homework, but Dean always slept on the sofa when they were in a motel.

And it wasn’t because it was so comfortable, as Harry realized while he waited until Sam and Dean were both asleep.

The second that the room was filled with soft snores and murmured words, Harry pulled his mirror from his bag and tiptoed out of the room. It was fully dark out as Harry crossed the parking lot to get to the car. It was locked, but Harry just hopped up on the hood and curled his legs up so he could see his mirror and the motel door.

“Sirius Black,” Harry said, noting his own miserable look when he looked in the glass. It had been tense since Sam returned from New York, Harry didn’t know how tense it went between his brothers until earlier that night.

It seemed as if every time things got better, something happened to make them start fighting all over again. It had been about their dad a few weeks ago –

“HE WAS A SHITTY PERSON, A TERRIBLE FATHER, AND AN ABUSIVE PIECE OF SHIT!”

And it seemed to be about Harry just a few hours before then.

Sirius took a few minutes to answer, and Harry grimaced at the noise that blared around him when he did.

“James!” Sirius was beaming in the mirror, his eyes lightly glazed, and loud music playing all around him. When Harry squinted at the surroundings, he thought it looked like Sirius was at a very colorful party.

“Er… Harry,” Harry reminded him. Sirius was probably drinking, that was all. He’d recognized Harry almost every time Harry had called recently. There was one time that he called him ‘Reg’, but Harry figured he was still getting better. When Harry called him about the article Rita wrote, the one that said that Sirius Black was an innocent man ‘according to the Boy-Who-Lived’, Sirius had been over the moon with excitement.

It didn’t mean anything, yet, but Harry was hopeful.

“Harry?” Sirius must have been quite drunk because Harry’s name didn’t seem to resonate with anything in his memory. “Harry Jeffords? James, are you still going on about him? He’s not even that good of a chaser, mate.”

Harry blinked.

Was he… named after some chaser his dad liked? That was news…

“Nevermind,” Harry sighed. He struggled to smile and then dropped it when Sirius’s gaze became clouded, distrustful. “Bye, Padfoot.”

Harry tapped the glass, ending the call, and hugged his knees to his chest so he could rest his chin on them. He had hoped that Sirius might have some wise words to say about what Sam and Dean had been fighting about earlier – something that would make Harry feel less terrible about it all.

Instead, Harry felt worse than ever.

Harry sat outside for a while, losing track of time, while he wondered how difficult the mirrors were to make. If Sirius remembered how he made them before- could Hermione replicate them? It would be nice if Harry had a way to get ahold of his friends more quickly than through the mail.

Just when Harry decided to get up and fetch some parchment, write a letter he could send off with Hedwig when they returned home, the motel door opened. Sam shuffled out the doorway and was clearly looking for Harry, his eyes swinging left, right, then focusing on where Harry sat on the hood of Dean’s car.

“It’s late,” Sam said as he shuffled toward him. Sam’s messy bedhead made Harry laugh, it looked a lot like Harry’s did in the morning, if more brown than black.

“Early, I think,” Harry said quietly, commenting on the sky that was beginning to lighten.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Sam asked. He leaned against the hood, propping his hip against it, and crossed his arms against the chill of the night.

“I tried to call Sirius,” Harry admitted, not looking at Sam but at his own socked feet instead. Harry didn’t know why Sam had gone looking for him, not when it seemed as if Harry had hurt him multiple times recently.

First it was with the newspaper article. Harry had no idea how much it would hurt Sam to read about his father in the paper. All Harry wanted was for people to not call his mum a slag or for anyone to think she jumped in the bed of any man who asked. Harry didn’t think about how that would hurt Sam, but it made sense.

If Harry read a paper calling the Dursleys a nice family, he would be hurt too.

Then, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, apparently Harry had gotten in between Sam and Dean. Harry didn’t understand a lot of the fight they had, but he understood that Dean was making changes because of Harry and they were changes that were hurting Sam.

So Harry didn’t expect Sam to wake up and go looking for him when he realized Harry left their room.

“Did he not answer?” Sam asked,  sounding surprised.

“No, he did.” Harry shrugged. “He thought I was my dad and I think he was at a party, or something, so I hung up.”

There was no point in asking Sirius for advice when Harry knew it would be rubbish anyway and when Sirius had been drinking and wouldn’t recognize him. Even bad advice would have been welcome though, as Harry was floundering over what to do.

“Hey, Sam?” Harry turned his head enough to peer at Sam, his face partially hidden behind his hair, making him feel much less self-conscious.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said when Sam hummed. Sam’s eyebrows twitched and Harry started rambling. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about that article. I just wanted my mum’s name to be cleared and I- I don’t know what happened with your dad and Dean or - ”

Or why Sam said that their dad had told Dean to kill Sam. John Winchester must have been twice as horrible as the Dursleys to have said that. The Dursleys thought magic, ‘freakishness’, was a thing that could be squashed from a person. John Winchester had jumped straight to ‘fix it or kill it’.

“Hey, stop.” Sam cut off Harry’s ramble as he began to apologize for making Dean give up hunting and he sat on the hood of the car with his legs stretched out. Harry hugged his legs tighter when Sam scooted right up against him, but he still leaned in Sam’s side when he wrapped an arm behind him.

“Dude, none of this shit is your fault,” Sam told him. “You just had the bad luck to be part of our really screwed up family.”

Harry bit his tongue, but he liked their family. Or, he liked Sam, Dean, and Bobby, anyway. Harry was certain he wouldn’t have liked John Winchester.

James Potter had died for Harry; John Winchester would have killed Harry himself.

It made an argument for family being more than blood relatives, anyway.

“And all that stuff I said earlier, I… that’s just between me and Dean, you know?” Sam said. “We – maybe – have some issues that could be worked out… but it’s not about you, I swear.”

“’You love hunting and you would give it up for Harry. So Harry, the wizard, can have a normal childhood’,” Harry quoted. He turned his head to rest his cheek on his knee and look at Sam for a reaction. “It seemed as if it were about me, at least a bit.”

Sam pulled a face, maybe not expecting Harry to have remembered his exact words from earlier. It wasn’t likely that Harry would forget any time soon, considering he was driving a wedge between his brothers.

“Harry…” Sam huffed, making a little cloud of air in front of him. “I’m just- it’s stupid, I was- am -jealous. Okay? Dean… all this shit he wants now, a house and a job, and him going to college? I just wish that Dean had wanted all of it when I was your age, that’s all. It’s a Sam issue, not a Harry issue.”

Harry mulled that over… a Sam issue, not a Harry issue… that made sense. It was similar to how Ron and Hermione had been fighting so much last year and half of Hermione’s anger toward Harry had been a Ron issue. That and because Harry had been angry over the Firebolt, which was absolutely a Hermione-issue.

Hermione and Ron had fought, but if Harry didn’t give too strong an opinion to either one, then he was able to mostly stay out of it all.

Could it be that easy with his brothers?

“So I’m not sort of ruining your life by being here?” Harry asked, voicing the worry that had choked him during the fight the night before.

“What?” Sam laughed and shook his head. “No way. I’m glad you’re here. We’re family, you know? We’re going to fight and probably say shit we don’t mean, but… but that doesn’t mean we don’t want you here.”

Harry made a sound of acknowledgement and leaned more heavily against Sam. That was something, really, Sam saying he wanted Harry there even if Harry’s presence was causing fights between him and Dean. It also made Harry feel better about his own jealousy of Sam and Dean’s easy relationship to know that Sam had gotten jealous as well.

Not that he should, in Harry’s opinion. Even when Sam and Dean had been fighting, Dean had said he was proud of Sam and Sam wanted Dean to have chosen him when Sam went to college. They screamed and hit and kicked (which had Harry biting his tongue until it bled) but they cared about each other so much it made Harry want to scream.

“I’m glad I’m here too,” Harry told Sam, meaning it. They couldn’t care about Harry as much as they did each other if Harry wasn’t there. He just had to remind himself that they had a lifetime of it just being them… Harry was new.

They would like him just as much eventually, maybe even without the screaming and beating each other parts.

Sam made Harry go back inside after a few quiet minutes together. Harry didn’t have any complaints when Sam told him to get some sleep. Sam and Dean were planning on going to one of the banks that they thought would be targeted next. Sam said they would be back before Harry woke up…

Which was why Harry was bemused when he woke up, much after noon, and both of his brothers were gone.

Harry yawned and stretched on the sofa, looking around for any signs that his brothers had returned. Sam’s bed was neatly made up, Dean’s messy from where he must have rolled out of it after Harry went to sleep.

There was a red cardboard box on the table, Harry checked and saw it had two donuts inside of it. One of them had a bite taken out of it, which was gross, but it also had caramel topping on it so Harry still ate it. Dean had probably taken a bite out of it, it seemed like something he would do.

Harry faffed around a bit. He ate the donut, took a shower… finished up a letter to Hermione and Ron…

It wasn’t until the clock clicked over to two and Harry’s brothers were still absent that he began to worry. Sam said they were going to check out a bank… Harry checked the map that Sam created on the wall and saw that the bank that was circled was only a couple of miles away… what was taking so long?

Harry could –

No.

They would not be thrilled if Harry showed up while they were working on their case. Harry was being stupid. Any number of things could be keeping them, it didn’t need to be something horrible.

Harry sprawled in Dean’s bed, since it was already a mess, and grabbed the remote to flip through channels. As much as Harry used to wish he could watch telly all day as Dudley did, it had lost its appeal over the years.

Channel ten had a cartoon playing. Channel twelve was music in a foreign language. Channel twenty caught Harry’s attention for a second, there was a couple half-dressed and snogging passionately…

Harry blushed at the idea of being caught and quickly flipped it to a new channel.

Channel twenty-six had a news report about a bank robbery. Channel thirty was a Christ –

A bank robbery?

Harry’s stomach fluttered as he quickly pressed the down button on the remote to get back to channel twenty-six. Possibly it had been an old report about the robberies that initially caught Sam’s attention? It could be old news.

A man with salt and pepper hair stood in front of what seemed to be a dozen police vehicles with their lights and sirens going off while he gave a solemn report. Harry turned the volume up and the initial flutter in his stomach turned to full panic at what he heard…

“We’re on scene at Milwaukee National where a hostage situation is unfolding. The initial suspect, Milwaukee National Employee Ronald Reznik, seemed to have inside assistance from these men…”

A picture of the bloke that Harry’s brothers interviewed the day before flashed- the bloke with the wild curls and soft face. Then a new picture, one that made Harry regret eating anything flashed on screen.

It was Sam and Dean in the door of the bank. It was blurry, quickly taken, but those were Harry’s brothers.

“The FBI is now on scene and will be attempting to convince the robbers to release the hostages before they storm the bank. It is unknown if their goal is to capture or kill, but the mood is tense downtown.”

Harry had never in his life gotten his shoes on, wand pocketed, and cloak covering him as he did. Before the reporter could even finish listing the area that people were meant to avoid, Harry was out the door.

Harry didn’t walk in the general direction of where he thought the bank was (he knew he would hear it when he got closer), he ran. Harry sprinted full speed until the sirens and voices being shouted led him to the bank.

It was madness, utter madness. Harry counted over a dozen police cars, several large black vans with no labels on them, but blocking off the streets from entry. Harry had to squeeze around blockades, sucking in his stomach and holding his breath so he didn’t bump any of the blokes in heavy gear holding large black guns.

Harry found a place near the bank and stared at the building, wondering how he could get inside – if he should. If Sam and Dean were in there with a bank robber taking hostages, or the shapeshifter that Sam thought they were hunting, then Harry wanted to help. But what if the police had already taken them in the time it took Harry to get there?

If his brothers weren’t inside, only the robber or shapeshifter, then Harry wasn’t going to go inside…

In all the chaos happening, people screaming at the barricades, reporters shuffling to get as close to the bank as they could to make their reports, it took Harry a while to find where the police in charge were. There seemed to be a little trailer off to the side where police officers kept running in and out of, maybe getting their orders?

Harry quickly made his way over there. He wasn’t staying as quiet as he should under his cloak, but nobody was going to hear his harsh breathing or hammering heart over the bullhorns being used to bark orders or the hysterical family members crying behind the lines. It was harder the closer Harry got to the small white trailer, there were too many people around.

“Hendricks said take ‘em down,” a hard-faced officer said as he stormed out of the trailer, nearly knocking right into Harry. He grabbed the radio clipped to his shoulder and clicked it on. “Myers, you see the shot, you take it.”

Harry froze, his insides turning to ice. ‘Take the shot’ didn’t have many meanings that Harry knew of outside of the obvious… they would be shooting inside the bank, aiming at Harry’s brothers.

Which meant that Harry needed to get inside the bank, immediately.

Harry skirted around blockades and police officers to try and find an entry on the bank that wasn’t being heavily watched. Harry had his wand, and he toyed with the idea of trying to use one of his new defense spells, diffindo, to break a window to crawl in. Every side of the building had at least ten police officers guarding it though, which left Harry without many options.

In the end, he figured that his best option was no worse than any other option…

Harry walked up to the front door, aimed his wand at the door, and simply unlocked it before slipping inside. Harry locked it behind him, as he wasn’t sure what he was walking in on but knew that it would be better to not have police following him.

How the muggles watching the bank explained the door opening itself then closing, Harry didn’t know and he didn’t care. All he cared about was making his way though the lobby with his wand clenched tight so that he could find Sam and Dean and get them out of the bank before anyone started shooting at them.

The lobby was dark and quiet, the police must have turned off the power to the bank… Harry could have lit his wand, but it wasn’t that dark yet. He made his way through the lobby, thinking of spells to attack with, and let out a breath of relief when he immediately found his brothers behind the counter of the bank.

Sam and Dean both had a gun in hand and were dressed in their FBI suits. The bloke they talked to the night before, Reznick, watched them argue back and forth about where the shapeshifter was. Reznick held a large gun, not unlike the one the police held, and Harry couldn’t tell if he was a threat or not.

Probably?

At a minimum, there was no reason for anyone to be holding a gun when they were in the same room as Harry’s brothers.

Harry edged around the room, staying away from the windows that the police had been aiming at from outside, until he stood just to the side of Dean, but with his back to a wall.

“Accio Reznick’s gun,” Harry whispered. It was one of the fourth-year charms that he had been practicing from the list Professor Dumbledore gave him. It had been irritating Dean when Harry did it at home, causing various items to zoom across their house to his hand, but practice paid off.

Sam and Dean went silent and Reznick stumbled when the gun was wrenched from his hands and flew directly to where Harry was hidden beneath his cloak. Harry caught the heavy gun, barely, and saw Sam’s shocked face and Dean’s exasperated one.

“And now Harry’s here,” Dean sighed. “Awesome.”

“Er…” Harry found the safety switch on the gun and clicked it over so it couldn’t accidentally fire before he placed it on the ground. He pulled the cloak off his head and grinned sheepishly at his brothers. “Hi.”

“You – why? How…?” Sam’s gasped questions went unanswered as there was a loud thud of Reznick fainting and hitting the ground.

“I might be in trouble,” Harry admitted, ignoring his own panic to focus on what was happening. Harry just revealed magic to a muggle, but if there was a shapeshifter inside the bank then would that truly count against Harry?

“Yeah, you fuckin’ are,” Dean growled. He crossed the room in a few long strides and clamped his hand down on Harry’s shoulder. “Have you lost your damned mind, kid?! Did this look like a place to come hang out?”

“I- I thought- the police are going to shoot you!” Harry cried defensively. “I’m sorry I didn’t think you wanted to get shot today!”

“We aren’t going to get shot,” Sam said calmly. He bent over at the waist and slowly made his way to Reznick. Sam’s blank expression didn’t change after he touched Renick’s neck, so Harry had to assume that he was only unconscious and that Harry didn’t actually frighten him to death.

“Yes you are,” Harry insisted. He looked up at Dean and begged him to believe him. “I heard them, Dean. If they have ‘the shot’ they’re going to take it.”

Dean looked to Sam and whatever problems they had must have been pushed aside in favor of the situation they were in. There seemed to be an entire conversation held between them without a word being said. Sam tossed his hand up some, Dean sighed. Sam lifted a shoulder, Dean pinched the top of his nose.

“Awesome,” Dean said again, just as sarcastic as the first one.

Harry wanted to ask what was ‘awesome’, but the sound of a phone ringing distracted him.

“It’ll be Hendricks again,” Dean said. He kept his grip on Harry, dragging him along the long bank counter to where the phone was ringing.

Harry had no idea what was happening, but it seemed as if bank robberies were much more complex than the cowboy movie that he watched with Dean made it seem. And if there was a shapeshifter in the bank… then it would be twice as complex.

Sam drifted closer when Dean snatched up the phone.

“Hello?” Dean said. He frowned, glanced toward Sam, his eyes flicked down to Harry, then he looked at Sam again. “Yeah, he’s in here.”

“What are they saying?” Sam whispered.

“And who is it?” Harry asked blankly. Harry might have charged in a situation he didn’t understand, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stand there and continue to be confused.

“It’s for you.” Dean held the phone out to Sam and seemed irritated by it.

“Uh… hello?” Sam instantly straightened at whatever he heard and Harry thought he might explode with curiosity. Sam’s eyes flew to the window and Harry swore he paled, though it was hard to tell for sure in the semi-darkness they stood in. “Yes, sir. A shapeshifter, sir. Um…” Sam looked at Harry and Harry tilted his head at him.

“Yes, sir. My little brother, sir. That- yes, sir. Harry,” Sam tilted the phone away from his mouth for a second. “Did you use an unlocking charm to get inside?”

Harry nodded, “Professor Dumbledore said I could.”

Sam’s lips twitched as he replayed that information to whoever he spoke with. Then he told the person that Harry had used a summoning charm, then he closed his eyes and sighed silently.

“You said quickly and quietly,” Sam said. “No, sir, this isn’t.”

“Sammy’s in troubleee,” Dean whispered in a sing-song voice to Harry.

Harry hoped he wasn’t, because there were a lot of questions about Harry and he would hate to be the reason that Sam was in trouble with what Harry guessed was his new boss. It was brilliant that Sam got a job as a creature hunter for MACUSA, Harry had already bragged about it to his friends. A sort-of-muggle working for the magical government? Even Ron with his brothers and their exciting jobs couldn’t compare to that.

“I will, sir,” Sam said on the phone. “Ten minutes?” Sam looked at Dean, Dean nodded. “Yes, sir. I can do that. Thank you.”

“Fired already? What a shame,” Dean grinned. Sam scowled as he slammed down the phone, but it seemed to be aimed solely at Dean.

“I am not fired, but I will be if we don’t find the shifter in the next ten minutes,” Sam told them. “Harry, get out of here. Dean, we need to split up and search.”

“I want to help!” Harry offered quickly. “Please, Sam?”

Harry didn’t want to wait outside, stuck wondering what was happening with his brothers. They might fight a lot, but they were Harry’s family and he couldn’t just ‘hope’ they didn’t get hurt.

Sam didn’t even hesitate though. He only yanked Harry’s cloak off him and folded it up neatly to hand back.

“No,” Sam said firmly. “White said if you weren’t out of the building in the next ninety seconds that I would be fired.”

“That’s rubbish!” Harry cried. He looked at Dean for support and found none. Dean’s jaw was set and he had dropped Harry’s arm to grab a silver knife from the top of his boot. “Dean?”

“It’s dangerous,” Dean said, not even thinking about it. “Sam, get him out of here. I’ll take the offices.”

Harry was preparing to argue and plead to stay, he could help, but Sam guilted him to leave.

“Harry, please?” Sam gave Harry what Dean called his ‘puppy eyes’. They were very convincing, they had Harry’s stomach twisting with guilt anyway. “I’m on thin ice already, it’s going to be a lot worse if you don’t walk out those doors and show White that you’re not injured.”

“I…” Harry wanted to stay, keep an eye on his brothers and make sure that nobody tried to shoot them or hurt them in any way, but he didn’t want Sam to lose the job he was so excited over either.

“Fine,” Harry conceded with obvious anger. He glared down at his cloak and scowled when he thrust it at Dean. “You can use this, but you better not so much as rip it. It was my dad’s.”

Dean held it up and laughed, “Is this how you got in the bar?” he asked. “An invisible blanket? Man, you’re like the Invisible Hood.”

Harry and Sam stared at him blankly.

“Kent Thurston?” Dean asked. “Smash Comics?” When neither of them made any sign of recognition, Dean rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Come on.” Sam pointed his gun at the floor so he could grab Harry’s shoulder, much more gently than Dean had done before him. “We’ll see you in ten minutes, okay?”

Harry hesitated when they reached the lobby. He looked up and searched Sam’s eyes, looking for any nerves or panic that would make Harry fight to stay. Sam seemed calm, his eyes were clear, and his jaw was set in the same confidence that Dean had shown.

“Okay,” Harry said. He couldn’t see the lines of police officers outside the doors, but he knew they were there. “Er… they might shoot me if I open this door?”

“White said he’ll meet you out there,” Sam assured him. He gave Harry a soft shove to the door. “Ten minutes, I swear.”

If they could find the shapeshifter in ten minutes, why didn’t they do that to start with?

Sam was right about his boss meeting Harry outside. Harry had only pushed the main door open before a hand reached out and yanked Harry to the side by the sleeve of Harry’s jacket. The next person to grab Harry and yank him around was going to get hexed, Harry could just feel it. It was one thing when it was Sam or Dean, Harry had gotten used to them. But some random stranger? No.

Harry made an indignant sound while the man yelled that ‘a hostage was clear’.

“Mister Potter, pleasure.” The man kept a hold of Harry’s jacket and pulled him along as he marched straight down the walk to the white trailer that Harry had snooped in earlier. Harry hadn’t seen the man, and he would have remembered.

The man, White, was tall and broad shouldered. He had neatly combed hair that was grey but Harry could tell used to be brown. When the man looked down at Harry, Harry saw that he had a grey beard just as neatly trimmed, and a pair of dark sunglasses that were the same shade of black as the suit he wore.

“It’s Potter-Winchester,” Harry corrected him, biting back on the sarcasm as he was certain that was Sam’s boss. Harry didn’t appreciate him threatening to fire Sam if Harry didn’t leave the building, it seemed to be unfair and probably based solely on who Harry was to the wizarding world instead of who Harry was to Sam and Dean.

“Apologies.” White spoke in a clipped tone as he took them to the trailer. “Your brother has created a spectacle here. I’ve been sent on clean up. Did the muggle inside witness your magic?”

Harry had to jog to keep up with White and he grimaced, hoping his own actions wouldn’t hurt Sam any.

“Er… yeah,” Harry admitted. “But that’s not Sam’s fault,” he added hastily. “I heard the police say they were going to shoot Sam and Dean and I went to help.”

“They’re lucky you alerted us to a wizarding child on scene,” White told him. Harry thought that he sounded angry, but it was hard to tell what was just his voice. “If our office hadn’t been alerted, the police force would have been storming.”

White made an intimidating image as he shouldered people away to get inside the trailer, Harry by his side. The inside of the trailer was much emptier than it had been earlier, with only two blokes inside of it. One bloke stood stiffly in the middle of the room, dressed in an identical solid black suit to White’s, and had his arms crossed. Harry didn’t need to see his eyes to recognize the jolt that made the bloke twitch when he saw Harry.

The other bloke was likely a muggle, and he was pacing irritably. The bloke stopped and glared at White when they entered, dismissing Harry without even looking at him.

“You must be Agent White?” the bloke asked. He had dark skin, a bald head, and very white teeth that were being bared in an unfriendly snarl at White. “Agent Hendricks,” he introduced himself. “Your partner here was just telling me that you called off my order to send my men inside?”

“I did.” White released Harry and drew himself up tall. He was quite tall and Harry quietly shrank to the side, interested in watching the confrontation unfold from a safe distance.

“One of my men are inside that bank,” White told Hendricks. “You send your men in and my man has so much as a scratch on him and your career, your life? It would be over.”

Oh. Harry brightened quite a bit as he looked at where White towered over Hendricks, despite the two men being of similar height. Harry liked him; Harry liked anyone who threatened a bloke over Sam’s safety.

Hendricks didn’t back down though and Harry suddenly wished he had brought the last donut with him. When he watched movies with Dean or Sam, they always had snacks. And if White had no intentions of letting Sam get hurt, then Harry wasn’t going to feel bad for free entertainment.

“Your man?” Hendricks asked, obviously seething. “Which one of those monsters inside that bank are you claiming? The serial killer? The grave robber? The schizophrenic?”

Harry frowned. None of those descriptions fit his brothers… except perhaps the grave robbing bit, but how would that man know of that?

“In case you forgot,” White stepped up until he was toe-to-toe with Hendricks. The air felt as if it dropped a few degrees, either Harry’s own mind or White’s magic lashing out. “I outrank you, Hendricks. My man and our investigations are out of your jurisdiction. If you plan to hold any sort of jurisdiction, I suggest you shut your mouth and get prepared for the release of the hostages.”

White held his wrist up, turning it outward to show Hendricks the watch that rested on the inside of his wrist.

“They’ll be out in eight minutes.”

Harry sort of felt like clapping when Hendricks said nothing and chose to storm out of the trailer, banging the door hard behind him. Harry didn’t clap, obviously, but only because White focused on him next.

“Your brother has seven minutes to secure the shapeshifter and evacuate the building before he’s removed from his post and my job here ends,” he said.

Harry thought of how Sam and Dean were so easily able to put aside their disagreements to finish their hunts before and he raised his chin, hoping he looked half as confident as his brothers had inside the bank.

“He will,” Harry said. He cracked a small grin, thinking again of how White had stuck up for Sam. “For grave robbers, they’re quite good at their job.”

White only stared at Harry for a long second before he gave him a more neutral look. It wasn’t a friendly look, but much kinder than the hard and emotionless one he held before then.

“They’d have to be,” he said. “They’re on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.”

That probably wasn’t the compliment that White said it as, but Harry thought it was interesting all the same.

It took Sam and Dean a little over their allotted time to finish off the shapeshifter inside the bank. When White called them from a small silver cell phone he carried in his pocket, it had been sixteen minutes since he first called.

Harry didn’t know that for a fact, but it was the first thing that White said when they must have answered his call.

“It’s been sixteen minutes,” White snapped in the phone. “Status?”

Harry shifted from where he had been sitting on a table covered in computers and monitors. They were all blank, but he thought they might have been showing the bank footage before the power was shut down. The other auror (or the bloke that Harry assumed was an auror) had left a few minutes earlier to ‘get in position’ and Harry very much hoped that his brothers had finished.

Judging from the very subtle way that White’s shoulders relaxed and his tone softened a tad, Harry thought they had.

“Clear,” White said. “Stand by for evacuation.”

‘Evacuation’ ended up being nothing more than White walking himself directly back inside the bank, ignoring the shouts of the police officers who warned him away. Harry asked White’s partner, who returned to wait with Harry at White’s command, what the muggles thought they did for a living.

“White is the Head of Magical Defense,” the partner told Harry quietly. They were standing in the doorway of the trailer and surrounded by muggles that were more focused on shouting than listening to their conversation. “He works in tangent with the Director of National Intelligence. These agents might not know who we are, but Director Haines does.”

“So there are muggles you work with that know about magic?” Harry asked curiously. That was interesting, Harry had always thought there was complete separation between the two worlds.

The auror turned their face down to look at Harry and smirk at him.

“You’re so British,” they muttered. “You should visit Japan sometime, wizards there don’t hide their magic at all.”

Not hiding their magic? That would be quite different. Harry could just picture himself going for a stroll down the street and using his wand to light the way. Harry forgot his jacket at home? He could summon it.

Clearly Harry needed to travel to Japan… and ask Hermione how many other countries had such lenient restrictions on magic.

*****

“You think he’s in trouble?” Harry asked Dean, worrying about Sam.

Since Sam and Dean had stepped out of the bank, Sam had been in a conversation with White to the side of the trailer. Harry and Dean were close enough that they should have been able to hear something, but it only looked as if Sam and White were moving their lips without saying any words.

“Yeah, probably.” Dean had a long scrape down the side of his face, but he seemed to be in a cheery mood. Harry hoped it was about taking down the shapeshifter, as it would be cruel to be happy that Sam was in trouble with his new boss.

Harry chewed on his lower lip while he watched Sam. A few times, Sam gestured toward Harry and Dean while he spoke, but Harry couldn’t begin to guess at what he said.

“Did you two… patch things up?” Harry asked Dean, looking up at him instead of at Sam. That had worked last time they had a wretched fight; they worked a case together and when the Trickster was ‘dead’, they went back to normal.

“Patch things up?” Dean chuckled shortly, not what Harry thought was a real laugh. “Dude, all Sam and I do is fight. If we weren’t fighting about something stupid, then I’d think his emo-ass was possessed again.”

“Oh.” Harry nodded and went back to watching Sam. “I hate that,” he said truthfully.

Dean landed his hand on top of Harry’s head and ruffled his hair.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said with as much confidence as he had shown earlier. Harry assumed he was right, Harry was much less concerned with his brothers’ recent fight than he had been when they were tracking the Trickster.

It made Harry feel worse, since he had been the cause of their fight, but if Dean wasn’t acting mad at him then Harry decided that it was a ‘Sam and Dean issue’, not a Harry issue.

Probably.

Harry would wait to send a letter off to his friends and get their opinions on it before he decided definitively.

“By the way…” Dean kept his hand on Harry’s head and smirked down at him. “You’re grounded.”

“What?!” Harry was reminded painfully of Dean’s words from the night before, when he implied that he saw Harry as sort of his child to raise. When they said it before, it had seemed like a joke, but Dean looked serious about Harry being grounded.

“Why?” Harry asked. He narrowed his eyes at Dean when he added, “And from what?”

Dean’s smirk grew until he looked so satisfied with himself that Harry doubted it meant anything good for him.

“For breaking in a bank that you knew had a monster in it,” Dean said calmly. “And so maybe you don’t go doing it again, Sam said he’ll return your cloak when he can trust you.”

Harry’s jaw dropped.

They couldn’t be serious – though they were.

They were taking Harry’s cloak? His heirloom? The thing he needed so that he could sneak around and- and break into banks with when he thought his brothers might need his help?

That was absurd.

“If I didn’t break in, Reznick might have shot you,” Harry reminded Dean, trying to appeal to logic.

“Nope,” Dean popped his lips. “Reznick was there to bust the shifter too. Course, he thought it was an alien or a mandroid or something, but we weren’t in any danger, kid. You screwed up, you take it up with Sammy.”

Harry did. The instant that Sam walked away from White, not looking like he had been fired, Harry asked for his cloak back.

“You have to take it up with Dean,” Sam said as he too messed up Harry’s hair. “When we can trust that you’re not going to go throwing yourself in the middle of situations where you could get hurt, I’m sure he’ll unground you.”

“I prefer it when you two are fighting,” Harry muttered sullenly. Harry had never been grounded before. Thrown in his cupboard without food for days at a time? Sure. Getting a frying pan or hard fist swung at him? Many times. The Dursleys even took Harry’s school things before, at the beginning of every summer aside from the last one.

But to have his cloak taken?! Harry didn’t think it was fair at all.

*****

Dear Hermione,
This is a rather long story that I'll explain more when I see you and Ron at Hogsmeade, but Sam and Dean have taken my dad's cloak. They said I'm 'grounded' until I prove I won't do anything stupid.
I think we both know this could be a long time for me and I really need my cloak back. It's how I tricked Sam into buying me alcohol losing a bet we made.
The cloak is in the boot of Dean's car, I think. It's the only place I can imagine since summoning my cloak won't work. I'll draw the symbol they have carved on the boot, will you tell me how to summon through it? Dean told me if I used magic on his car and risked 'shorting his baby's engine' that he would be furious. It might seem silly, but Dean's mental about his car.
Love, Harry.

Harry,
What did you do that Sam and Dean, who seem very brash to me, had to ground you over? Also, did you mark out where you said that Sam bought you alcohol? You do realize I can still read that, right? I didn't recognize the symbol, so I went to the library. It's a rune of protection against supernatural forces. I imagine that magic won't work to open the trunk or summon things from it. It's very clever, really. I'm quite impressed.
I do think that Dean being so concerned for his car is silly, but I thought it was silly for us to fight over a broomstick one time so I assume that genetics may explain quite a few of your personality traits. It's terribly interesting.
I can't wait to see you and to hear more about what made your brothers ground you. I'm not sure if Ron is coming with us or not, he's been talking about starting chess tournaments on Hogsmeade weekends. I hope that's okay?
Love, Hermione Granger
PS: Have you seen the Prophet recently? I'll send a copy just in case. It looks as if the Wizengamot will be meeting soon to discuss Sirius Black's case!