“I wish I didn’t know.”
November 6
Harry woke up slowly, too comfortable to want to really wake. His bed was warm, cozy, and Harry spent a few minutes nuzzling in his pillows happily.
His bed?
Harry snapped awake in an instant as the wrongness of the situation hit him. Harry shouldn’t be in his bed, he should be in the car. And, Harry sat up and looked around with his mouth open and shock hitting him from every angle, that wasn’t his room.
Harry’s bedroom was small, comfortable. Harry had a bookshelf Bobby gave him by his closet with his school books and photo albums on it. Harry’s closet was neat, tidy, with his clothes all hung up and a bin for dirty clothes beneath them.
Wherever Harry was, it wasn’t his bedroom, even it it… it sort of seemed like it was? Or, it would be if Harry owned a great more things than he did, was something of a slob, and had a giant bedroom.
The bedroom was certainly decorated to Harry’s taste? The walls were a deep red, the parts Harry could see between photos and posters anyway. The closet door was open and Harry could see Harry-sized clothes spilling out of it, even his invisibility cloak…
Harry swung his legs over the side of his bed and cursed quietly for not having his wand on him. Did he…? How was he…?
Harry couldn’t even formulate the questions he had before someone was calling his name. It was a familiar voice, one that made Harry’s heart leap in his throat while he told himself it wasn’t real.
Harry heard that voice saying his name before though, he heard it every time he was near a dementor. Harry heard it in his nightmares, the soundtrack to his worst memories.
“Harry! Love! Time to get up!”
It wasn’t possible, but Harry couldn’t help the way he leaped from his bed, hardly noticing that he only had on a pair of comfortable pajama bottoms - though that was wrong too, Harry got cold at night in his room because the window was always open for Hedwig, it drove Sam mad as their rooms were so close by. Harry couldn’t truly care yet though, not until he found the owner of that voice.
Harry tore out of the bedroom that was-wasn’t his and found himself in a hallway with a staircase only a few doors down from where he stood. There was noise coming from downstairs and Harry didn’t think about it as he raced down them, desperate to squish his own irrational hope.
Except it wasn’t irrational, it wasn’t. Because Harry ran through a doorway on what seemed to be the main floor of the house he was in and she was there.
Not a dream, not a vision in a mirror, not a photograph, but standing beside a table full of people Harry didn’t care about with her red hair pulled up in a messy bun, a wand stuck through it, and an apron thrown over jeans and a blouse… it was…
“Mum?” Harry was frozen in place as his mother, the woman he’d always wanted to meet and never could, turned to smile warmly at him. It wasn’t until Harry saw proof of what he had heard his entire life - “You’ve got your mother’s eyes” - that he could move.
Not far.
Only the four steps it took him to run to his mother and throw his arms around her in a desperate hug.
Harry was sobbing and he didn’t care, neither did she. It was everything Harry ever dreamed of, being wrapped up in a hug from his mum. Lily’s arms were sure as she held Harry, though her voice had the perfect note of concern when she spoke.
“Harry, love, are you okay?” she asked as she rubbed soft circles on Harry’s back. “What’s wrong, baby? Did you have a nightmare?”
“No.” Harry continued clutching his mum and nothing in the world could have broken him away as he tried to memorize everything about her. If Harry only had a few moments where he could pretend that she was real, he didn’t want to forget anything.
Harry could have stayed there forever if it wasn’t for the next person who spoke up, jerking Harry’s attention to the others in the room.
“He’s just homesick already,” a deep voice said, familiar in the voice if not for the teasing yet worried tone.
Harry only turned his head, refusing to release his mother, and was hit with another sharp blow to the chest.
There, sitting at the head of a table, sat James Potter. He was older, his hair was still a messy wave of black, only more tamed than it had been when he was a teenager, and his glasses were crooked on his nose, but it was him. And Harry let out another painful and wretched sob - what had he done to deserve a dream like it?! - before he saw the others in the room.
Harry didn’t know them, had never met them, but he could guess who they were immediately. There was a girl maybe a year or two younger than Harry with long curly red hair and wide green eyes behind a pair of rectangular glasses. The other kid, a much younger girl with her freckled cheeks popping out from food, blinked at Harry with the same green eyes Harry had and James Potter’s perfectly messy hair.
Sisters.
Harry had sisters.
When that realization punched Harry in the stomach and he once again hid his face in his mum’s shoulder, letting her rub his back while he cried at everything that wasn’t real, Lily hissed at James.
“Calming Drought,” she said. “Something is wrong with our son.”
‘Our son’.
Harry was their son and he had never heard those words before in his life.
It was too much. All of it… all the wildest desires of Harry’s life that he never even dared vocalize… it was too much.
It was going to hurt so badly when Harry woke up…
Harry’s mum forced Harry in a chair just to the left of his dad, beside the smallest girl, and when his dad (his mum… his dad…) summoned a deep blue potion, it was gently shoved in Harry’s hand.
“Drink this, baby,” Mum said, her eyes kind and warm when she frowned down at Harry. Harry hadn’t relinquished her, he only held the back of her blouse with one hand while the other held the potion.
Harry didn’t care what it was - it was all a dream anyway. When he drank it, he felt warmth flooding through him, drying his tears and releasing the vice on his lungs. Harry’s hand slackened and Mum (Mum) gently removed his hand from her shirt.
“Better?” she asked, smiling at him. Harry nodded, still too overwhelmed to speak, and she smoothed down his hair. “You’re going to be fine, your brothers are excited to see you.”
Harry blinked and then absently reached out to grab his dad’s arm on the table beside him when Mum moved out of Harry’s reach. She grabbed her wand and Harry watched as she gracefully, silently, began navigating pots and pans to the table to fill Harry’s plate with food he could never eat.
“Brothers?” Harry asked blankly, losing his breath again when Mum left the room. He wanted to cry out to her, ask her to come back - how long did he have? She had to stay, she couldn’t go - but Dad clucked at him.
“You were out with the twins last night, weren’t you?” When Harry only turned a blank face to him as well, Dad winked. “You can’t mix your potions with liquor, son. You know better.”
“Right,” Harry said, mystified by that. “The twins?”
The girl with the red hair snorted and Harry looked at her, not nearly with the same desperation he did his parents.
“Fred and George?” she said, her voice childish and lilting in a teasing way. “Wow, you’re super out of it.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed, smiling back at her and loving the way she so easily smiled at him. They were maybe two years apart… she was already Hogwarts age, judging by the wand she had by her glass of juice.
Maybe they would have been the best of friends… Harry would have loved to have someone to teach things to, to take care of the way that —
“You said my brothers?” Harry asked his dad, smiling that much harder when Mum returned to the room, a coffee mug in one hand and a parchment floating in front of her. She sat down opposite of Harry, just beside the red-headed girl and was frowning at whatever she read.
Dad seemed patiently exasperated with Harry’s questions and he too gently pried his arm from Harry’s grasp before placing the back of his hand on Harry’s forehead. Harry leaned in the touch, tried to clamp down on the keening sound in his chest.
“You sure you’re feeling alright, Prongslet?” Dad asked, frowning in concern. “Lils, maybe we should tell Dean that Harry’s not feeling well? We could pop by Andy’s, let Ted give him a quick check-up?”
Harry wasn’t sure how much of a dream he was in anymore, not when he didn’t recognize the names his dad used.
“Fine by me.” Mum sniffed as she watched Harry over her parchment. “You know I miss you so terribly when you’re gone.”
“I miss you,” Harry said, soft and earnest. Harry had spent his entire life missing her and never knowing until then exactly what it was that he had been missing. Then Harry tried to make himself focus on his brothers, Dad said Dean and Harry should have been with Dean… in the Impala… they had been hunting something…?
“Oh.” Mum startled when there was a crack outside and Dad dropped his hand so he could stand up with a smile stretching across his face.
“Who do you think that is, Sami?” Dad asked the little girl beside Harry as he reached out for her.
“Padfoot!” she cried. “Dad, hurry! It’s Padfoot!”
Harry was so jealous when Dad scooped up the girl that he called…
“Sami?” Harry questioned, understanding the name and not the connection. He looked at his mum. “Which is short for…”
“Samantha,” Mum said slowly. She frowned, “Love, I don’t like the way you’re acting. Why don’t you go get a shirt on and we’ll go pop by the Tonks, hm? Dean will understand if you’re sick, Sirius can get a new portkey date.”
“No, I’m fine,” Harry paused, “Mum.”
Harry looked at the red-headed girl and considered her for a moment. “And your name is…?”
It was a dream, it wasn’t real. So the girl making a horribly offended face didn’t truly hurt Harry’s feelings.
“This is your worst prank yet,” she sniffed at him, which only made Harry grin.
“Sorry,” he said. “Is it…” Harry saw a ‘V’ on a gold chain around her neck, inlaid with tiny glittering jewels of blue and black.
“Vivian?” Harry guessed wildly, trying to think of a name that might start with a V.
“Violet,” Mum said, answering Harry and frowning outright. “Get a shirt on, Harry, we’re going now. Vi, go tell Daddy and Padfoot that Harry’s not going today.”
“No! Wait! I’m fine,” Harry said quickly. Harry’s dreams weren’t usually so detailed… with details he never could have imagined. Harry didn’t want it to end - he wanted to see his brothers. When Mum gave Harry a skeptical look that he could have spent his entire life receiving from her, he made a wild lie on a whim.
“I went drinking with the twins last night,” Harry said, since apparently that was a thing that Dream-Harry did. He smiled at his mum and worked to look sheepish. “And we mixed it with potions?”
Mum sighed and a part of Harry exploded with the perfectly mother-like look she gave him.
“When you get home next month, you’re cleaning my lab for a week,” she scolded him. “You know better, Harry James.”
If Harry could listen to his mum say his name in the same sentence as ‘home’, he’d clean a hundred labs for a million weeks.
Harry was given a long lecture about the risks of mixing potions with liquor while he was lovingly nagged at to eat.
Everything Lily Potter said felt loving… Harry just felt loved.
When she accepted that he ate enough and had apologized enough for something he had never done, she sent him to get dressed and ‘grab his bag’. Violet followed Harry and it seemed so natural the way she breezed in the room he woke up in (his room?) and flopped on his bed.
“You’re going to miss so much this month,” Violet complained while Harry began looking through the closet filled with clothes. “Colin and Trent are going to come stay for a week, Dad said he’d even take us to Holyhead to see Sapphire and her mum.”
“I’m leaving for a month?!” Harry asked, spinning back to pin his sister (!!) with a horrified look. Harry couldn’t leave his family for a month, he just couldn’t.
“Uh, duh?” Violet said, squinting at Harry behind her glasses. “I think you drank a Stupid Potion or something. I’m telling Minnie you’ve been inventing again when we get back to school.”
“Maybe, yeah.” Harry didn’t understand half the conversation but he knew that he was meant to be going to Dean, to Sam. They would know what was going on… because Harry was beginning to think that he was absolutely not dreaming.
Did Harry… time-travel? Or… touch something cursed? Harry had to think hard about it, but he had definitely been in the backseat of Dean’s car before he woke up. Sam and Dean were going inside a warehouse and Dean had said something daft like… ‘he who won’t train with guns is he who watches the car’.
Maybe Harry followed them? Touched something or - or had been cursed?
For a curse… it was a brilliant one.
Harry opened his closet doors wide and stopped when he saw his reflection. It… it was Harry. It was Harry’s black hair, short on the sides and long on top, not unlike how Dean wore his hair. They were Harry’s eyes, wide and shocked, but…
Harry touched his forehead with one hand, his chest with his other. The lightning bolt scar and the anti-possession tattoo… they were both gone.
Was he… taller? Leaner? There was something about his bared torso that Harry rather liked, even if his missing tattoo bothered him.
Harry also had a necklace on, which was strange. He stepped closer to the mirror and looked at it. It was familiar and it took Harry a long moment to place it.
It was Dean’s amulet, he always wore it. Why did Harry have it on?
Thinking that he would get some answers about what was going on when he found his brothers, Harry dressed quickly. He didn’t want the dream to end, he just needed to know that it would last.
“Er…” Harry looked around the room he was in, searching for a bag as his mum (Harry loved thinking that… and Harry loved that he knew her name was Lily, apparently the dream came with a brain repair) had told him to get.
“Your stupid duffel bag is in Sami’s room,” Violet told him. She had her arms crossed and Harry saw that she was glaring at the carpeted floor. “She didn’t want you to go this summer…”
There was something sad about the way Violet said that, something that made Harry ache inside as he looked at his sister.
“I’m coming back,” Harry said, quietly and meaning it. When Violet only shrugged skinny shoulders, Harry awkwardly shuffled over to her and bent down to give her a loose hug.
It was meant to be loose, since Harry had no experience with little sisters or hugging them, but then Violet threw her arms around Harry and squeezed him tightly. Harry melted in her embrace, sort of loving it.
“Will you be careful this summer?” Violet asked when they broke apart. She had her lower lip out and Harry thought her eyes looked glassy. “It’s just… I’m sort of still hoping you’ll break up with Hermione and marry Sapphire so we can be sisters but it’s never going to work if you get killed doing something stupid with your stupid brothers.”
Harry laughed at first, soaking in the teasing laced with concern and love, then he froze.
“Break up with Hermione?” Harry repeated. He stared at his sister, dumb-struck. “I’m dating Hermione?!”
Violet crinkled her nose, muttered something about ‘stupid boys and stupid potions’ then pointed across the room from where Harry’s bed sat. When Harry looked where she pointed, it took him less than a second to cross the room.
There, in dozens of photographs, was the life that Harry could have had… once upon a time.
Harry saw himself as a small boy, laughing while a familiar black dog ran around him. There was Harry with Lupin, listening intently as the man read him a book. Harry with Sam and Dean, grinning in front of some sort of statue; Harry was maybe ten, Dean had to be in his early twenties, Sam was a teenager. There was a man in the photo, one that Harry only recognized by context.
“John?” Harry breathed, staring hard at the picture. He didn’t seem… unhappy… in fact, he was grinning and had a hand on Sam’s shoulder and one on Harry’s. Harry looked happy, just as happy as he did in the pictures with the Gryffindor quidditch team, the ones with Ron and his family… the many photos of Harry and Hermione.
Kissing.
There was a photo of Harry, dressed up in smart black robes he’d never seen before, dancing with Hermione in a set of light blue dress robes. They were looking at each other with soppy faces before Harry ducked his head and kissed her.
It was startling, just not as much as the many, many, photos of Harry with all of his family. His parents, his brothers, his sisters… Sirius was in a great many photos, always smiling. Lupin was there as well, happy as could be.
“Mum is so right… puberty is horrid,” Violet said when Harry began crying again. Harry didn’t think he was usually such a baby, in real life anyway, but seeing the life Harry could have had - in color photos that moved across his wall, taunting him?
God, nothing had ever hurt so badly.
Violet was more helpful than Harry thought a little sister would be as she fetched Harry’s bag from a bedroom decorated in pink with fairies and flowers painted on the walls. Harry also got a peek in the other bedroom and found that it was painted purple with loads of bookshelves filling the walls.
Harry didn’t have many bookshelves… but he had the most photographs and Gryffindor banners. There had even been a flag for a professional team in his room, apparently dream-Harry supported the Appleby Arrows.
When Harry and Violet made it downstairs, Harry was a little more prepared to see Sirius grinning at him. Sirius looked… well, great, really. Tall and fit, Sirius had a handsome grin that made him look roguish when paired with his leather jacket and long black hair. There weren’t any shadows in his eyes, just happiness when he said Harry’s name.
“Harry! My favorite godson!” he laughed. Sirius oofed when Harry threw himself at him and caught him in a fierce hug as well. Sirius seemed just as startled as everyone else had been, but Harry didn’t care.
Sirius was there and he had never been to Azkaban and he knew Harry’s name and he was happy to see Harry.
“You’re huggy today,” Sirius said as he ruffled Harry’s hair. “You feeling okay, Prongslet?”
Harry would have given anything for his real relationship with Sirius to be like that. Anything.
“Harry went out with the twins last night,” Mum said, a bit snappily.
“Awe, c’mon, Lil.” Sirius shifted to have an arm around Harry’s shoulders as he defended him against his mum. “Fred and George just finished their OWLS, they earned a celebration.”
“They were mixing liquor with potions,” Mum said.
“Which was very wrong, son!” Dad said, winking at Harry behind his mum’s back. “We raised you better!”
“We raised you to not get caught,” Sirius said, causing both men to crack up.
Harry could see then how close Sirius has been to Harry’s dad, how much it must hurt him to not have James with him anymore. It was like a reflex, Sirius laughed and James laughed. James winked and Sirius smirked.
They were as close as Sam and Dean.
Sirius and Dad started reminiscing on parties they attended when they were kids; Harry wanted to hear every detail that the real Sirius had never shared with him, might not even remember. When Mum reached out for Harry though, he went to her happily.
“You’ll be safe, won’t you, love?” Mum asked, hugging Harry so perfectly. “I worry about you boys.”
Harry inhaled the scent that was pure mother. Lily smelled like lavender and clove, maybe something spiced that Harry had smelled in potions class before. It was unique and perfect, Harry wanted to soak every item of clothing he had in that scent so that he would be always wrapped in it.
“I love you,” Harry told her with his eyes clenched shut tightly. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, Harry,” Mum said, her voice thick. Harry squeezed her, wanting to hear it again, and she said it once more -
“I love you more than anything.”
Harry was hugged by both of his sisters before his dad gave him a long hug and a whisper that Harry could always come home early and bring his brothers with him. Harry got the impression that his parents were rather clingy…
He loved it. Harry also loved how it seemed as if Sam and Dean were a part of the family, included in all the offers and last-minute shouts of love.
It was terrible, leaving behind his family. Harry wanted to run to his mum, stay with her for as long as he could. But if it wasn’t a dream that Harry was experiencing, then Harry needed to know.
Harry had to know that he could stay, that his family would be there in a month as they said they would.
“I know where we are!” Harry cried when he went outside with Sirius. The front lawn was enormous and the trees around it were familiar enough that Harry could lean forward and squint and - yes, he was sure of it.
Harry’s family lived in the same area as the Burrow!
“I’d hope so,” Sirius laughed, his arm around Harry’s shoulders as he guided him toward black and silver motorcycle. “You’ve lived here for - Merlin, has it been ten years already? Since Sami was born.”
“Did they name her after my Sam?” Harry asked, unable to hold back his question over the little dark-haired girls name.
“You mixed firewhiskey with a Babbling Beverage, didn’t you?” Sirius asked Harry with a grin. He grabbed a red helmet off the seat of the motorcycle and gave it to Harry. “Moony did that once, he failed our pop quiz in charms the next day.”
Harry did a shrugging nod sort of motion and waited to put the helmet on until Sirius answered his question.
“You’re the one who insisted on Sami’s name,” Sirius told him. “Sam was your favorite word, Prongslet. You called Lily’s belly Sam so much that they couldn’t name her anything but.” Sirius laughed then and he looked fond. “Dean was so jealous, I remember him telling James to name the next one after him.”
Harry laughed too because that was perfect. It was all so perfect.
So was the next destination they went to. Harry didn’t know where they were going, he didn’t care. But when Sirius pulled over in front of a pond that Harry knew sat behind the Burrow and kicked the motorbike off, Harry looked around curiously.
“Three minutes until our portkey leaves,” Sirius told him. He tilted his head toward the wooded area, as if Harry was meant to know what he was supposed to do. “Go on then, you blackmailed me hard enough for it,” he grinned.
Harry swung his leg off the bike and handed Sirius his helmet, curious what he would have blackmailed his godfather for. It didn’t take him long to figure it out - when a familiar face stepped out from behind a tree and aimed a bright smile at him, Harry knew.
“Hermione,” Harry said, thrilled both with seeing his friend (girlfriend?) and knowing her name immediately. Harry was also markedly pleased when Hermione threw her arms around Harry’s neck and kissed him.
It bothered Harry for a second, having his first kiss be in a dream (?), but it was hard to care too much when Hermione was warm and sweet and kissing her just felt so right.
“I’m going to miss you,” Hermione said when they broke apart. The way she smiled at him was unreal… it was the way she always had, really, but it felt very different with her arms around his neck and his on her waist.
“I’ll miss you,” Harry said, blinking away stars in his vision. Were all kisses that brilliant? Was it the dream? Hermione herself?
Harry wanted to kiss her again and - since it seemed like he could - he did. Hermione made a pleased sound and Harry made an equally pleased noise when he realized that she was standing on her tippy toes to snog him.
Dream-Harry was tall.
Harry could have spent quite a while just kissing Hermione, but they were interrupted after too short of a time by a horn beeping back where Harry had left Sirius.
“Call me?” Hermione asked.
Harry felt dazed, but he nodded anyway.
“Be safe,” Hermione said, hugging Harry once more. “Tell your brothers I said hello.”
“Alright,” Harry said. “I…” Harry couldn’t help but kissing Hermione once more while the beeping became more incessant. Harry didn’t know what was happening or why he was living some perfect life, but he knew that it wasn’t a curse.
Curses did not involve snogging the girl you fancy and being hugged by a family you never had, they just didn’t.
Harry returned to where Sirius waited with an exasperated look - people seemed frequently exasperated with dream-Harry… - and only just grabbed the helmet Sirius held out before they were jerked away by a portkey.
Dream-Harry seemed just as clumsy as Harry always was because when they landed after a sickening thirty seconds of travel, Harry tripped over his own feet and crashed into Sirius. Sirius fell backward, along with the motorbike beneath him, and they ended up in a pained heap up hot cement.
“Smooth move, ex-lax.”
Harry looked up at the most familiar voice yet and saw his brother, Dean, standing beside where Harry laid half on Sirius with a hand out to Harry. Dean didn’t look any different than he had when Harry saw him just a few hours ago.
Maybe he was less tense, he certainly had an easier smile, but everything else was the same.
“Dean!” Harry cried, pleased to see that it was actually him. Harry accepted Dean’s hand and let his brother pull him up to his feet. “What happened?” he asked him, thinking Dean would know what had happened.
“Uh… you scuffed up a classic bike?” Dean said, his eyebrows twitching like they did sometimes. Dean held Harry out at arms length and looked him over. “Man, you got taller. You’re going to outgrow me soon.”
“Never Sam though,” Sirius quipped as he stood up and lifted his bike like it weighed nothing. Harry took a second to look around and didn’t recognize anything about the empty alley they were in, aside from Dean’s car parked beside them.
“Sam didn’t outgrow me and Dad until he was about nineteen though,” Dean said. “I guess you two got the height and I got the looks, huh?”
Harry couldn’t help but preen, even if Dean was insulting him in a way. Who knew that having a family could make a bloke taller?
“Where is Sam?” Harry asked, looking around for him again. Sam had been there during the hunt, he had to know what happened.
“He should be home tonight,” Dean said. “Until then it’s just you and me, kid. Dad won’t be home until morning, I figured we’d grab lunch and catch up on the way home?”
Dad… Dean’s dad was dead, but so were Harry’s parents… Did - did Harry get dropped in a world where dead people came back to life?
“Where’s…” Harry hated himself for asking, but he needed to know. “Where’s your mum?”
The answer was plain when Dean frowned, more in a show of concern than hurt.
“My mom?” Dean clarified. “She’s dead, dude. Are you okay? How hard did you hit your head?”
Harry touched his head absently, feeling for another scar that he somehow knew wouldn’t be there. Yeah, it was gone. The scar beneath Harry’s hair from where he had surgery wasn’t there because… because Harry wasn’t dreaming, he was in an entirely different world.
And it was brilliant.
Sirius took off on his bike after chatting with Dean for a minute. Harry was confused by that until he got in the Impala and Dean began driving.
“Are we…” Harry saw a giant billboard after they got on the road and he was sure he knew where he was. “Are we in Las Vegas?” he asked.
Dean truly frowned at Harry then. “For the last three years?” he said. Dean blinked and then a slow smile spread across his face. “Dude, you’ve been inventing with those twins again, haven’t you?”
Why did everyone keep assuming that? Harry couldn’t imagine what was so different about his life that it seemed as if his best mates were Fred and George, but that wasn’t really a difference that even blipped on the map of everything else that was so different.
“Yeah,” Harry said, adding a laugh. “Er… so I’m a bit mixed up. We weren’t - I mean - did we hunt something together recently?”
It wasn’t a ghost that they had been hunting, even though that was what Sam originally thought. There was something different about the deaths, something that made Dean decide it wasn’t a ghost.
What was it?
“Don’t even joke,” Dean groaned, turning back to the road. “I still have nightmares about when your mom found out about that zombie you talked me into hunting together.”
“Did Sam go with us?” Harry asked.
“Sam? Hell, kid, you might still be drunk,” Dean joked. “Sam hasn’t been on a hunt in his life.”
“Never?” Harry asked, bemused. “What about when you and your dad go on hunts?”
“What? Like when I was a teenager?” Dean asked. He shrugged when Harry nodded. “I mean, when he wasn’t crashing with your family in the summers, he just stayed home. It’s not like Dad was ever gone long? I guess before you came along I watched him sometimes.”
That didn’t make any sense to Harry who had spent months picking up bits and pieces of Sam and Dean’s life. Harry went quiet while he tried to piece it together… It seemed like it was summer and if the twins just finished their OWLS, as Sirius said, then Harry was… thirteen again? Harry couldn’t remember the exact day that he had met his brothers, but he was sure that their dad was already dead by that point.
So Harry was thirteen and his parents were alive, all three of them… and Harry had grown up with his brothers and John Winchester… Dean knew about magic, clearly, so it seemed safe to assume that Sam and John did as well.
“Does your dad like me?” Harry blurted out.
Dean scoffed and shook his head at Harry.
“Dude, you better sober up quick because you’re going to break the old man’s heart if you keep calling him my dad.”
So… yeah… it seemed like maybe he did.
Dean played the radio loud while he drove, which was familiar and welcome, and Harry zoned out as he tried to decide what explanation seemed most logical.
A dream didn’t make sense anymore, it hasn’t since he saw his sisters honestly. Nothing seemed cursed, just the opposite in fact. Time-travel couldn’t have happened, because nothing was the same as it had been a few months ago.
Everything was just better and Harry truthfully couldn’t think of a single explanation that could explain all of it. The only thing he could come up with, something he would need someone to confirm at some point, was that Harry somehow landed in a world where Voldemort had never attacked his family.
How it happened? Harry didn’t know and he didn’t care. All Harry cared was that he would get to stay, which meant Harry actually needed to find out how it happened… make sure it wasn’t reversible.
Harry started asking Dean questions as soon as they entered a diner together.
“What’s something that you might think is a spirit but isn’t?” Harry asked when they were seated. Dean had been looking at a menu, but he paused to give Harry another frown.
Dream-Dean frowned almost as much as normal Dean did.
“Like a poltergeist?” Dean asked after looking around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. Harry considered that and shook his head, certain that wasn’t it.
“I don’t think so,” Harry said. He made up a lie as he went, hoping it would jog something for Dean. “It was a case I read about. There were maybe six or seven deaths, one a year? They couldn’t find a reason for the death, but the bodies were all found in an old warehouse around the same time each year?”
And there had been something about the bodies… something that made Harry’s brothers think that it hadn’t been a ghost after all.
“Hm…” Dean sat back in his seat and considered that. “Man, that could be anything. Could be a single vamp, sucking one person dry a year?”
“No, it wasn’t that,” Harry said, hastily correcting himself. “They caught it, I just don’t remember what it was and it’s bugging me.”
“Anything else weird about the bodies or the area?” Dean asked.
Harry waited until the waitress came and took their orders before he tried to find a way to explain what was happening without sounding mental.
“I think I read that people who were there had wishes granted?” Harry said carefully. “Maybe even wishes they didn’t know they had?”
Dean’s expression cleared at once and Harry was relieved by the ‘aah’ he made.
“A djinn,” he said knowingly. “Nasty creatures, dude. They take their vics and drain ‘em dry over a year or so while they give them some sort of magic LSD to make them think they’re living in a fantasy land, one made off their deepest wish. Dad killed one just outside Boston a few years ago.”
Harry felt cold wash over him at Dean’s explanation. It… it fit… Harry even thought he remembered Sam mentioning a djinn on his list of possible monsters. It was why Harry had to wait in the car, because they hadn’t been certain of what they were hunting, only that it might have been inside the warehouse.
“So the places where the djinn sends people, those places aren’t real?” Harry asked, seeing his mum in his mind. She seemed real, she felt real. Harry could still smell her on his shirt when he bent his head down.
“I dunno, dude, who cares?” Dean asked airily, kicking Harry’s foot under the table to get his attention. Dean was smiling at him and it was hard to not smile back.
If everything felt real, maybe that was enough. Maybe it didn’t matter if it wasn’t real. If Harry could spend one year in that life - one single year with his family - what did it matter? One year was nothing and if Harry died at the end, then so what? Harry would have given up his entire life for a year where his mum told him she loved him, where his dad cracked jokes and lectured Harry about being safe. Harry had his brothers, he had sisters. Sirius was happy.
If it was ‘magic LSD’ then… then fine. So be it.
As far as Harry was concerned, magic LSD was the best thing to ever happen to him.
Harry played up a muddled memory from a night of drinking and asked Dean as many questions as he could get away with. Dean lived just outside of Las Vegas in a house he shared with his (their?) dad. Sam went to Stanford during the school year - he just finished his pre-law degree and would start law school in the fall.
Harry asked if their dad had been upset about Sam going to college while they ate their burgers and Dean sighed.
“I mean, was he thrilled? No. I think Dad just hoped that Sam would want to go in the family business, you know? Hell, Dad could have gotten Sam hired on like nothin’, but he took it a lot better than he did when you decided to go to Hogwarts.”
“Because he…”
“Was worried about you?”
“Hates magic?”
Harry blinked at Dean and Dean blinked at Harry.
“Was worried about me,” Harry said, repeating what Dean said and adding a breezy smile. “Right.”
Dean shook his head again and took a giant bite of his burger, talking around the food after he chewed for a moment.
“Dude, whatever you drank- don’t drink it again.”
Harry agreed and then impatiently waited for his brother to finish eating so they could go to Harry’s… other family’s house.
That was brilliant.
Harry felt lighter on the drive to Dean’s house even while he invented answers to Dean’s questions.
How was school? Fine. Did his team win the quidditch cup? They had in Harry’s first third year, so he assumed they must have again. How were Harry’s friends? Good. Did Violet have a good first year? Sure, why not?
How were Harry’s parents? Perfect and alive and everything Harry could have ever asked for.
“Home sweet home,” Dean said when they reached a house in a rather secluded area outside of the city. It was a nice house, much smaller than Harry’s other house, but it looked like a cozy cottage in the woods, like something from a storybook.
Harry liked it.
It also reminded Harry that he had a question for Dean, one that he thought he might already know the answer to.
“When you said that your - er… our dad could get Sam hired on in the family business, you meant with MACUSA, right?” Harry guessed. Because in real life, Dean had told Harry that hunting was a lifestyle, not a job, or something rather daft like that.
“Yup.” Dean climbed out of the car and Harry scrambled to follow him. Dean only stepped around to the boot to get Harry’s bag, which laid on top of a cache of weapons - which was the same as usual.
“And do you work there as well?” Harry asked, following Dean to the front door of the cottage.
“Not during the summers,” Dean said with another shake of his head. “Why don’t you go grab a nap, kid? Try and sleep that shit off. No offense, but the twenty questions game is going to get real old.”
“I will do that…” Harry said slowly, drinking in the inside of the house. It wasn’t heavily decorated, but it had a very distinct sense of ‘blokes live here’ with the car sign that hung above a black sofa, a large telly that spread across a wall. There were beer bottles scattered about, something Dean was quick to begin cleaning.
“Don’t tell Dad the place was messy when he gets home,” Dean said. He grinned wickedly at Harry, a playful twinkle in his eyes. “Or I’ll tell him about Easter break.”
Harry blinked in bemusement. He spent holidays with his Winchester family? Did Harry… did Harry’s families divide his holiday breaks? Giving him equal time with both of them?
“What did I do on Easter break?” Harry asked.
Harry had been wrong before. Apparently he had been in a wreck in ‘Magic LSD-Land’, but it was entirely Harry’s fault as he crashed Dean’s car while trying to sneak off in the middle of the night.
Dream/Magic LSD-Harry didn’t seem to have much common sense…
Dean helpfully pointed Harry toward ‘his’ bedroom and Harry carried his bag with him. Harry’s bedroom was nice, another room that felt like it had been decorated specifically for him… or by him.
Harry had bunk beds, which was strange until he peeked in both of the identical dressers in the room. One dresser had more Harry-sized clothes in it, the other had larger clothes and - after glancing in the closet that had a divider in the center - Harry found a sweater that said Stanford on it.
So Harry and Sam shared a bedroom. That made sense, Dean said Sam was still in school and if Harry was also in school then they must bunk together in the summers. Harry sort of liked that, sharing a room with Sam. Sam was much neater than Dean, though the real Dean never would have worried about a few empty bottles lying around.
Harry couldn’t decide which bed was which and he ultimately climbed up to the top bed for the novelty of it. Harry had always slept in a single bed, but a top bunk was neat. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, as excited as he was about his life (even if it wasn’t real…), but he must have drifted off because the next thing he knew, Dean was yelling his name.
“Harry! Phone!”
A top bunk was such a novelty that Harry forgot he had fallen asleep in one and went to hop off his bed and wound up falling and smacking his head on the floor. If Harry wasn’t already certain that it wasn’t a dream, he was then because that hurt.
Harry shuffled out of his room and went back to the living room where Dean was spread out on the couch with a bottle of beer in one hand and a cell phone in the other.
“Who is it?” Harry asked curiously.
“Your girlfriend,” Dean said, his eyes on the telly. “She said your phone keeps going straight to voicemail. I can’t believe you haven’t turned it on yet.”
Well, that was because Harry didn’t know he had one there to turn it on.
Harry still accepted the phone and put it up to his ear.
“Hermione?” he said.
Dean sputtered so hard that he spewed beer and saliva across the room. That was followed by a series of coughing, which Harry could hear clearly even while someone that was not Hermione raised their voice in his ear.
“Did your brother say it was your girlfriend and you asked if it was Hermione?” a girl demanded. Harry didn’t know who it was… he didn’t know any teenage girls that had an American accent? A fleeting thought crossed Harry’s mind that maybe Dream/Magic LSD-Harry was dating Jo, but it didn’t sound like Jo’s twang either.
“I thought Dean said… my friend?” Harry said, staring at his brother and making frantic ‘what’s happening?’ motions with his free hand.
Dean held finished coughing and he was wheezing as he held out his hand.
“Phone, gimme,” Dean said. Harry didn’t even hesitate, especially since the girl didn’t sound very happy with him.
“Michaela, hey,” Dean said, stressing the name with the eyebrow raise he made at Harry.
Michaela? Michaela…
Pink-haired Michaela from the airplane crash?!
“Harry’s high,” Dean said. He grinned. “Yeah, I know. Sure, absolutely. No, I swear. Aw, don’t be like that.” Dean winked at Harry. “I’ve met her, just some boring chick that tutors Harry. You know, a real bland brainiac.”
Harry bristled, but Dean’s insults about Hermione worked and when Dean handed Harry back the phone, Michaela was chatty and cheerful.
“I can’t believe you’re high,” Michaela laughed after Harry gave a hesitant hello. “Did it make the flight here easier? Ugh. I wish we could fly in together. I’ve missed you. Mom says she can bring me over tomorrow if your dad says it’s alright? Maybe we could talk one of your brothers into driving us to the city? There’s a new arcade and it’s wicked cool!”
Harry agreed, rather bemused, and then got off the phone as quickly as he could. Harry returned the phone to Dean and then just sat down beside his brother.
“I have… two girlfriends,” Harry said, trying to make himself believe it.
“One for each house,” Dean said nonchalantly. He nudged Harry’s shoulder with his after he took another swig of his drink. “Michaela’s cuter, Hermione’s smarter. Best of both worlds, little bro.”
Harry stared unseeingly at the telly, coming to another realization. Not only was Dream/Magic-LSD clumsy and didn’t seem to have any common sense, but he was a bit of a dick too.
Tall though, that was still good.
Harry and Dean sat in the living room for a while. Dean watched his movie, occasionally making comments to Harry about things he had missed —
“Dad bought a new truck. It’s lame as hell, dude. He said it’s got better gas mileage. I’m trying to convince him to keep the old one for you, won’t be long until you’re driving.”
“Dude, you totally missed Sam freaking out. Jessica thought she was pregnant, it was hilarious. Turned out, she was just stressed about mid-terms.”
“Jessica?” Harry asked, latching on to that comment. Sam’s girlfriend? She was alive too?
Harry couldn’t piece together how his deepest wish made so many changes. Unless…? A demon killed Jessica and Sam and Dean’s dad. Maybe - maybe Harry’s parents being alive somehow meant the demon Azazel was dead?
“Yeah, your celebrity crush,” Dean snickered, shouldering Harry again. “You might miss her this summer, Sam said she’s going up to stay with her parents. I guess her grandma’s sick or something.”
“That sucks,” Harry said, grinning. It didn’t suck, it didn’t suck at all. Jessica was alive and Sam was in college and everyone must be so bloody happy.
Harry certainly was.
It got better when Sam returned home. Sam looked different- it was… it was the happiest Harry had ever seen him. Dean teased Sam that he looked ‘like a yuppie’, but Harry liked Sam’s pressed trousers and his neat collared shirt. It made him look young, truthfully. As did the wide smile and the lack of any bags beneath his eyes.
It struck Harry then that Sam, his Sam, the real Sam… he must be carrying so much. It was horrible, actually. Harry much preferred the Sam that opened the door and held his arms out for Harry, seemingly just as excited to see Harry as Harry was him.
“Dude!!” Sam hugged the air from Harry’s lungs and then laughed when he held him out at arms length. “You got tall!”
“And you got h- handsome!” Harry said, catching himself just before he said ‘happy’. Sam laughed at that and Harry got another hug.
It wasn’t as much of a dream for Harry to have dinner with his brothers - Dean talking about cars and cases, Sam talking about his classes and Jessica. Harry just soaked it all in; Dean’s constant grins when he looked from Harry to Sam (Harry wondered if Dean was lonely during the school year), Sam’s sparkling eyes when he mentioned Jessica.
If Harry’s wish was making his brothers so happy, Harry couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.
Sam excused himself not much later after they had pizzas together.
“I’m beat,” he said apologetically. Sam smiled at Harry while he threw away their paper plates. “You want to hit a movie tomorrow? There’s a new movie about wizards, I thought you might like it.”
“You nerds just want to talk shit about everything they got wrong,” Dean said, jostling Sam as he put the leftover pizza in the refrigerator. “Laaaame.”
“I think it sounds great,” Harry told Sam. “Dean? Will you go with us?”
“What?” Dean clutched his chest dramatically. “I’m being invited to nerd day? Sammy, catch me, I’m fainting.”
Sam laughed when Dean swooned and Harry rolled his eyes fondly.
“I mean, if you want to?” Harry said. “Actually, even if you don’t want to, will you anyway?”
“That’s the brother I know and can’t stand!” Dean said, straightening out of Sam’s arms and winking. “Fine, fine. If I’m geeking out tomorrow though then I’ve got a hot date to make it up to tonight. You guys gonna be good if I head out for a while? I’ll be back before Dad gets home.”
“Go for it.” Sam yawned and stretched his arms out. “I’m going to bed. Try to not be a jerk when you get home, huh?”
“We’ll see.” Dean aimed a soft punch to Sam’s shoulder then one to Harry’s. “You good, kid?”
“I’m fine,” Harry said. And he was - actually, Harry was better than fine. Harry couldn’t imagine ever being happier.
But that was before Harry got to meet John Winchester.
After Sam went to bed and Dean left for his date - “Fix the salt lines behind me, kid. If Dad beats me home, he’s going to lose his shit if those lines are broken.” - Harry poked around the house.
Dean’s room was much like his real room was, decorated with posters and Harry saw a few pictures of their family stuck to the walls sporadically. One of them made Harry stop in surprise, it was… Dean and Sirius. It looked like they were at a concert together.
They seemed happy, like the best of mates with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders and broad smiles.
Another photo was of Harry, Dean, Sam, and John on what seemed to be a camping trip? It must have been recent, Harry looked much as he did. They were sitting around a fire and Harry and Dean had sticks in the fire, toasting something. They looked so close… like a real family.
Harry’s fingers itched to steal that photo, take it back — no. Harry didn’t need to steal it because he was staying. Harry was going to spend a month with his dad and brothers then he was going home to his mum, his dad, and his sisters.
Nothing was going to make Harry leave, not for as long as the magic LSD let him stay.
Harry poked his head in the third bedroom, the one that had to belong to John Winchester. It was very neat, tidy, and Harry was rather intimidated by it. The draw of the framed photographs on the nightstand drew him forward though…
There were two of them -
One of a young John Winchester with a pretty and blonde woman. The woman had a tiny baby in her arms and John had a toddler in his. Harry smiled softly at the photo, guessing it was Sam and Dean’s mum back when Sam had been born. The other one was similar, though with marked differences.
John Winchester, older, sitting in a chair with a small black-haired baby in his arms. Dean, gangly and freckled, grinned at the baby. Sam, small and childish with big hazel eyes, blinked at the camera, maybe surprised by the flash.
Harry had to leave the room quickly or he was going to steal those photos and that would be hard to explain since Harry was staying.
Since Sam was sleeping and Harry was wide awake, Harry ended up curling up on the sofa in the living room. Harry didn’t turn on the telly, or any lights when it got dark; he didn’t need anything to distract him from all the thoughts he had.
Harry thought about how he never would have considered to wish that his parents were alive, it was a fantasy. It was the sort of thing that Harry might have dreamed of, but never imagined coming to life. And it was all just so much better than anything Harry could have made up in his head.
Then a pair of headlights lit up the living room, Harry thought that it might have been Dean returning early, but it wasn’t his brother who walked on quiet feet through the door.
It was John Winchester and Harry’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the man who fathered him for the first time. John dressed like Dean, with heavy black boots, beaten blue jeans, and a flannel beneath Harry’s jacket. But his face? Harry stared at his face from across the room and finally saw proof of what his real brothers had been saying to him for months.
Harry looked like John.
Except for his eyes… when John took his jacket off, hanging it on the hook and he saw Harry watching him… Harry saw that Sam had John’s eyes.
“Hey, kid.” John’s voice was rich, deep, a bit raspy. It was warm though, Harry didn’t expect that.
“Hi,” Harry said. Harry’s voice was choked, nervous, and he cleared his throat while John removed his boots.
Harry wished Sam was awake or that Dean were home. It was terrifying, meeting John. After everything Harry heard, everything he picked up from his brothers and Bobby… Harry just didn’t think that John was someone he would like.
“Jet lag kicking your ass?” John asked him, padding toward Harry. Harry inched back on the sofa and hid his hands beneath his legs, hiding the tremble in his fingers from John’s sharp eyes.
“Yeah,” Harry said, his heart hammering away. The closer John got, the more Harry thought he was going to be sick.
Then John stopped just in front of Harry and his lips curled to the side while his hands twitched at his sides.
“What? No hug for your old man?” he asked Harry gruffly.
That was not what Harry expected. Harry also didn’t expect John to hug him tightly, very briefly, and then to keep that same crooked smile on his face when he looked Harry over.
“I swear you get a foot taller every time I see you,” John said. “What are they feeding you at that freaking school, huh?”
Harry shook his head, too shocked to speak. Harry had spent months thinking that John would hate Harry, but he was warm, friendly, saying the same things that Harry’s brothers did.
“I saw Sam’s car in the drive, he make it home okay?” John asked him.
“Yeah, he’s asleep,” Harry said. One of Harry’s three words made John’s lips twitch and Harry didn’t know what it was.
“Yes, son,” John said. He stressed the first word with a soft squeeze to Harry’s shoulder and Harry didn’t understand it at first. When John turned and walked toward the kitchen, his steps sure and his shoulders squared, it clicked.
Harry forgot, but Dean said that John was in the military and Harry wondered if it was his ‘yeah’ that got corrected? That seemed like a thing that John would do.
“Where’s Dean?” John asked Harry. He stood in front of the refrigerator for a moment, scanning the contents, then pulled the pizza out.
“He said he’ll be home tonight,” Harry said. He hesitated and then tried the title out, “Dad.”
John nodded and chose a slice out of the box to eat without warming up. Harry relaxed at the lack of a scolding, so Harry calling him ‘Dad’ wasn’t strange.
“How’s your parents doing?” John (Dad?) asked Harry between bites.
“They’re good,” Harry said, unable to keep the awe of that answer from his voice. They were good, they were alive and wonderful.
“Good.” Dad (John?) grinned and the sun-tanned lines around his eyes wrinkled. “How did school go? You keep your nose out of trouble?”
Probably not.
“Yes,” Harry said, getting a nod in reply. Harry didn’t know what else to say, so he shifted the focus back to John (Harry was at a loss for what to call him, even in his own thoughts). “How did your case go?”
“It was a pain in the ass,” John answered bluntly. “I spent two days tracking a werewolf and it was a damn bear that just liked heart.”
John shook his head and took another slice from the pizza box before crossing back over to the living room and sitting down right beside Harry.
“I’m surprised Dean took off,” John commented as he propped his feet on the coffee table “You know he’s been countin’ down the days until you got home.”
Harry started to smile about that, but his fear at sitting beside a man that he spent months believing would kill him if they had met wouldn’t let him. Instead, Harry blurted out the question bouncing around in his mind.
“You don’t hate me?” Harry asked, trying to both put space between them on the sofa and to not obviously scoot away. John turned fully so that he could face Harry and when he frowned he looked like Dean. Or Dean looked like John… something.
“I’m a wizard,” Harry said, beginning to ramble when John didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “And everyone said you hate magic and you must know I’m a wizard, but you’re not - do you… I don’t get it.”
John’s face cleared up, as if Harry’s rant made sense to him somehow.
“You’ve been taking to Lupin,” John said, nodding knowingly. He sighed heavily then and shook his head. “Bastard can hold a grudge, can’t he?”
Harry rather liked Lupin, but he nodded then as he threw Lupin entirely under the Dream/Magic-LSD bus.
“That was a long time ago, son,” John told Harry, stern but not cruel. “Maybe I didn’t love the idea of magic then, but it isn’t so bad. Your parents are good people and you’re going to be a good man.”
“Besides,” John put an arm over the back of the sofa, close enough that Harry could feel the warmth of it without feeling trapped by it, “You might be a wizard, but you’re a Winchester, kid.”
Dean said that to Harry too. Dean told Harry that he didn’t care if Harry was a wizard because he was also a Winchester. Not - one or the other, but both.
It made Harry think about his Dean and how happy he would be to see the place that Harry was in. But Harry’s Dean was probably - probably…
Harry’s Dean was probably hunting a djinn and if he killed it—
“Dad?” Harry tried the word again and found that he didn’t hate it. John was relaxed with his head tipped back and he hummed. “What happens to a person under a djinn’s power if someone kills the djinn?” he asked nervously, not wanting to be abruptly taken from the life he had always wanted.
“Nothing,” John replied, easing Harry’s concern before adding a new one. “The poor bastard will be stuck in whatever dream they think they’re living until their body slowly dies. It takes a couple of years if they don’t get themselves out of it, but they eventually die.”
Harry looked at his hands, wondering if he would feel it. Harry wondered where his body actually was, but he knew where it would be, didn’t he? If the djinn got to Harry then Dean and Sam would have gotten to it. They would have killed it and - and they would have Harry’s real body.
They were probably upset, scared. They wouldn’t just say so, but Dean would be testy and Sam would be buried beneath a thick stack of books. It made Harry’s chest ache, picturing his brothers watching over his body and trying to find a way to bring him back.
They didn’t know that Harry was happy, they didn’t know that Harry had everything he had ever wanted. Harry’s parents were alive, their dad was alive. Sam had Jessica and Dean went to concerts and counted down days before his brothers returned home.
It wasn’t real; it was a fantasy, not unlike the Mirror of Erised. It felt real though, to Harry anyway. All his real brothers would know was that Harry… Harry was slowly dying and they couldn’t fix it.
They would be trying though, Harry knew that for certain.
Something ripped in Harry’s chest then and he had to clench his jaw and twist his face up to keep from releasing a sob.
“How?” Harry whispered, picturing real life too clearly.
Sam would have more weight on his shoulders, making him seem much older than he was. Dean would hide his unhappiness behind anger. They would fight, they would try everything. Sam and Dean would spend two years doing nothing but trying to fix Harry before Harry died.
Harry knew that for certain because that was what he would do if he were the one in real life. Harry wouldn’t know that they had everything they ever wanted. Harry would only know that they were gone and he would want them back.
Harry knew that watching them die anyway would kill him.
“Hmm?” John was tired, half-asleep with his arm behind Harry and his face relaxed, like Dean when he slept.
“How does a person get themselves out of a djinn trip?” Harry asked him.
John shifted over some and he was warm and solid and there. John was there and he didn’t hate Harry, he didn’t hate magic.
“If they die in the trip before their body dies, usually works,” John murmured. “This for homework or something?”
“Yes,” Harry lied. He laid his head back on the sofa, allowing the silent tears streaming down his face to fall on his shirt.
John fell asleep and Harry stayed awake for a very long time, warring with himself.
When Dean returned many hours later, sneaking in the house with a grin, Harry had made a decision. It wasn’t much of a decision, truly. It was a sacrifice.
And it hurt. It hurt so much.
Harry extracted himself from beneath John’s arm and studied him for a long moment, just taking in every line and scar on his face, the very faint freckles on his nose. Harry reached out and softly touched his thick hair that was beginning to grey in a way that made him seem more rugged instead of old.
“Bye,” Harry whispered, quiet enough that Dean, who was removing his shoes and jacket at the door, couldn’t hear him. “I wish - I wish we could have met like this.”
Harry would have liked to meet the man who didn’t seem to spend his life chasing a demon. Harry thought that he would have liked hunting with him, as he did his brothers. Harry would have asked him what muggle military was like, maybe Harry would have wanted to be like him when he grew up.
That man had never existed though.
Harry forced himself to turn his back on John and if that was painful, it was only going to get worse. Because then Harry went to Dean and wiped the smile off his face when he told him the truth of what he wanted, needed.
“I want my mum.”
It didn’t take long for Harry to get back to the family that had died on Halloween so many years ago. Harry told Dean he was sick and Dean called Sirius while Harry carefully went through the house and took the things he wanted.
The photographs from John’s nightstand, one from Dean’s room. Harry found a gun in Dean’s bedroom, stuffed beneath his pillow. Harry took the clip out and saw that it was filled with silver bullets.
When Sirius arrived to apparate Harry back to England, Harry said goodbye to Dean.
“You’re the best brother in the world,” Harry whispered, hugging a Dean who didn’t squirm or tense beneath his arms. “I love you.”
Dean was bewildered and he assured Harry that he would see him in a day or two, after Harry saw a medi-witch or wizard. Harry only hugged him tighter, lingering for as long as he could.
Leaving Dean wasn’t so hard, not compared to what Harry knew was coming.
It was early when Harry and Sirius returned to a house that Harry didn’t think existed in the real world. Maybe Harry’s parents had it built, just so they could be nearby to another wizarding family. Maybe they spent holidays with the Weasleys. Maybe Mrs Weasley watched Sami when Harry’s parents worked.
That would have been an excellent childhood to have experienced.
“Sirius?” Harry looked at his godfather, the one who had never seen the inside of an Azkaban cell. Harry loved him so much, almost more than anything.
Harry wanted to stay and get to know that Sirius, the happy one who didn’t lose James, didn’t lose years of his life for a crime he never committed. But the real Sirius, the one who was moody and sick and needed help, had already lost so much.
Harry wanted to stay for Sirius, but he knew he had to leave for him too.
“I love you,” Harry told him, swallowing all the questions he wanted to ask. Harry could wait, Harry would. He would fix things with Sirius when he was back… back in a place where the Potters died and there was no pretty house or sweet sisters.
Sirius hugged Harry then and Harry burrowed in that hug hard. Over and over, Harry apologized to Sirius in his mind until it was only a desperate litany of - Imsorryimsorryimsorry.
Walking away from that healthy and happy Sirius was hard, it was so hard. It took more effort than almost anything Harry had ever done.
It was nothing.
Because James and Lily Potter were awake and waiting on Harry when he went in the house.
Harry tried to say his mum’s name, but the pained sob trapped in Harry’s chest - shoved down until he was where it knew he couldn’t control it - broke free. It was all Harry could do to run to his mother and let her catch him.
Harry held the woman he spent a lifetime dreaming of while she kept him from breaking apart completely. James was there too, rubbing Harry’s back with whispered promises that everything was going to be okay.
They were everything Harry had ever wanted.
Why couldn’t he have it?
“I love you so much,” Harry told his parents. “God, I love you.”
“We love you,” Dad said, his hand on top of Harry’s head.
“My baby,” Mum breathed, never breaking the hug even when Harry had soaked her shoulder with his absolute misery. “I’ve loved you since before I knew you.”
She said it so easily.
Maybe Harry grew up hearing that. Maybe Lily Potter tucked him in every night and told him that she loved him since before she knew him.
Harry wouldn’t know. The only words Harry could hear from his Lily were her screams as she begged Voldemort to spare her son.
Harry knew his parents last words, that was it.
“I wish I didn’t know this was here,” Harry whispered to his parents. “I wish I didn’t know how amazing life could be.”
More than that - Harry wished he had found the djinn before he did his brothers. If Harry had been trapped in a fantasy while his body slowly died before he met his brothers, he wouldn’t care.
It would be the kindest death there was, a better end than anyone had ever known.
Harry stayed in the arms of his parents for as long as he could. If he could have made it last an eternity, it wouldn’t be long enough.
Then Harry did the most selfless thing he had ever done and stepped away from the two people who had loved him first.
“Will you say it one more time?” Harry asked them, drinking in every detail of what an adult James and Lily Potter looked like. Harry had seen them young; nobody had ever seen James with laugh lines etched beside his eyes or Lily with a crease between her eyebrows.
“Say what?” James asked.
Lily smiled at Harry softly, so sweetly that Harry didn’t think he would need a bullet. Just knowing what he was going to lose was killing him- slow, pain beyond anything he had ever known.
“That we love you?” Lily guessed. “We do, baby. We love you so much.”
Harry gripped the handle of the gun in his sweater pocket tightly. His thumb sought out the little switch on it and he flicked it off, knowing how to do it because his Dean taught him how.
“Dad?” Harry asked, watching his mother even if he needed to hear his dad say it too.
“I love you, Prongslet,” Dad said, confused but loving. “What’s —”
Harry didn’t give them time to say anything else. It was then or never.
And when Harry couldn’t have his parents anymore, he wanted their last words to be words of love.
Harry woke with a scream of pain - it was pain burning him from the inside out.
Pure, burning, agony.
Harry screamed again and he thrashed out at the arms that grabbed him. There was no wound in the side of Harry’s head, no physical injury to explain the pain that scraped every nerve in his body. There was only a hole in his chest, a hollow and dark place where all that he could never have would live for the rest of his life.
The last thing that Harry had seen were Lily Potter’s green eyes and the first thing he saw when he came to were Dean Winchester’s green eyes.
They weren’t the same, but the frantic words spilling from Dean’s mouth were the same. If not the words themselves, then the tone behind them.
“I thought you were gone. I thought we lost you.” Dean had Harry in his arms and he rocked him while Harry’s scream broke to a fresh sob, a real one that poked and prodded at the throbbing hole in Harry’s chest. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Harry knew without checking that the photos he stole in a fit of desperate madness weren’t in his pocket anymore. There was no gun in his hand, Harry wasn’t even wearing what he had been.
There was just Dean and Sam and that had to be enough.
It had to be because Harry gave up everything for them.