“I can’t impersonate a dragon on my own.”
November 14
Dean was not pissed that Harry seemed to get some fire in him the last couple of days. That was good, fire might keep him alive. Hell, anything was better than him accepting death by dragon.
So no, Dean wasn’t pissed about that.
What Dean was pissed about were the wheel simulators for his car. Those covers kept Baby’s wheels from getting any gauges on them and could be replaced when they became too scratched or chipped.
They cost about three hundred a set and Dean thought he could feel his eye actually twitching when he went outside that morning and found two of them in the middle of the yard.
“It’s the nifflers, they like shiny things,” Sam said, sounding so calm and oh so freaking wise. Sam was, as he had been for the last freaking week, buried behind a book. Dean couldn’t bitch about Sam being awake at the crack of dawn and already getting his geek on, not when Sam’s red hot passion for research might come in handy.
Dean could bitch about the freaking nifflers that were beginning to haunt his dreams.
They were kinda cute, at first. Just knee-height little oddball animals that Harry was making out of stones. They had cute little faces and when Harry got good enough to make ‘em move, they would scamper over to Harry and put their paws on his knees to beg for scratches.
Then Harry got real good at making ‘em and they started attacking. That was when they stopped being cute and Dean started wondering how grilled niffler would taste.
Probably pretty damn good.
Those cute creatures turned out to be vicious and had a taste for Chevy Impala that made Dean want to shoot every single one of them.
Dean had to park his car in Bobby’s garage when they returned from the kid’s doctor appointment on Tuesday. The doctor didn’t have any great magic solutions for Harry just to ‘keep doing what he was doing’ which was crap and proof that even magical doctors were quacks.
Sam said he thought that it was the kid’s name working against him. Nobody wanted to screw with his brain because God forbid they made the problem worse.
Harry didn’t seem bent out of shape about it, even if Dean spent the entire drive back from the Pierre bitching up a storm. Harry just got back to work when they returned home.
Dean hid his car for her own safety and what happened? Harry must have been making nifflers after Dean went to sleep because there were his simulators, sitting between a couple of big ass rocks.
If Dean thought to sue his brother for the emotional distress at seeing his Baby’s pieces in his yard first thing in the morning, he might call it exhibit a.
“I know the nifflers like shiny things,” Dean snapped at Sam as he stormed out in the yard to get his wheel covers. Just as Dean suspected, the caps for them were all clawed up by small and vicious fingers.
“I also know that they’re evil little bastards who don’t care about my freaking car!” Dean had the two covers in his hand as he aimed a hard kick to one of the rocks. “Stupid! God damned! Nifflers!”
Dean kicked the rock until it went sailing across the yard and hit the side of the porch. Which was just awesome, because it left a dent in the wood.
Nifflers were ruining Dean’s life.
Sam looked at Dean from where he’d made himself comfy with his books.
“Feel better?” he asked sarcastically.
Not even close.
“Great,” Dean growled. “I’m going to Bobby’s. If Harry wakes up before me, tell him to cool it with the freaking shiny stealing freaks. We’re all gonna be pissed if they start stealing copper wiring.”
Sam scoffed at Dean’s back as he began making his way to the garage. It was true enough though, if those dang things weren’t so obsessed with Dean’s car, they’d notice the trailer filled with wiring.
And rewiring that place would cost a helluva lot more than replacing the wheel simulators would.
Dean let himself in the garage and stopped just inside the door, groaning at the mess.
The scrap metal pile was scattered everywhere, making the garage a maze of destroyed metal. There were tools every couple of steps, most of them with tiny scratch marks all over them. There was a mini-mountain of socket heads, piled up in front of Baby like some sort of sacrifice to the nifflers favorite toy.
Even if a niffler was gonna keep Harry from having to get up close with a dragon, Dean really hated the damn things.
Dean had the garage sorted back out and was working on buffing the scratches from the wheel simulators when Bobby made it out there. It only took Bobby a moment of looking around to notice the scratches and tools that Dean might have put in the wrong spot.
“Fuckin’ nifflers,” Bobby snorted. He walked right over to Dean and grabbed the bottle of shine to work on the second cover Dean was trying to repair.
“I caught one of those little thievin’ rat things in my basement last night,” Bobby said. “I took it to your brother and y’know what he said? ‘Oh, I thought I lost it’.”
Dean snorted at the way Bobby tried to mimic what seemed like a pretty bland reaction from Harry.
“I’ll be thrilled when he’s done with them,” Dean told Bobby. “It’s only a matter of time before they try and steal my tie rods or axle.”
“Eh, it makes the kid feel better to make ‘em,” Bobby said, slowing Dean down.
“Does it?” Dean asked, thinking about that. Yeah, the kid seemed pretty hellbent on making his own niffler army, but Dean figured that magic spell was like a muscle that needed flexed constantly to keep it working right.
It didn’t help matters that Harry had to read the spell off a paper. Dean didn’t know much about magic, but he knew that exorcisms were a helluva lot easier when Sam memorized the script and didn’t need to read it from a book.
“The way I figure…” Bobby paused to scrape off some dirt in the crease of one of the cover caps. “Kid’s got more holes than swiss cheese in his brain when it comes to names, he’s gotta stand up in front of a dragon next weekend. If makin’ his annoying ass creatures keep ‘im calm, then I ain’t complainin’ any.”
Damn.
Dean looked down at the cover he’d been shining and felt like a douche. Dean had been complaining, about everything. Everything was pissing him off - the nifflers that were destroying shit, the doctors that weren’t fixing shit, and Dean who couldn’t do shit about any of it.
“I’m screwing this all up, Bobby.” Dean flattened his palms on the workshop table and dropped his head. Bobby was the least religious person that Dean knew, aside from himself, but he was like a priest when Dean wanted to confess every fucked up thing he had done.
“The kid had to deal with some shitty djinn trip, a car crash, and now he’s gonna face a dragon with a freakin’ two foot tall niffler on his side? What? ‘Cause Sam and I can’t get him out of it?” Dean slapped the table, sending the caps he had cleaned to go flying. “I’m screwing this all to hell, man.”
The worst part was that Dean couldn’t see any alternatives other than to let himself continue screwing everything up. It was the kinda shit that Dean should have thought of before he signed up for at least four years of raising a kid who seemed to have bad luck following him like a cloud.
Raising him.
Dean had been shootin’ shit off when he said it before, but it was the truth, wasn’t it? And, Sam could say whatever shit he wanted about Dad, but Dad wouldn’t have let either of them deal with so much shit. Dad could’ve found a way out of the shit hole Harry was dropped in.
And Dean had just been bitching about his car.
Real nice of him.
“It ain’t easy, but you’re not screwin’ anythin’ up,” Bobby said. He put a hand between Dean’s shoulders. “Ya didn’t get handed some newborn with a blank slate, Dean. Ya got a teenager with magic and wizards and a bunch of bull. And you’re doin’ what ya can, ya just can’t do it all.”
Empty words.
Dean flung the wheel simulator off the table, letting it fly to the wall and crash on the ground. Dean glared at it, pissed at it too for being so expensive and so easily tore up by evil magical nifflers.
“Dad could have,” Dean said, hollow words.
If Sam were the fourteen year old having to face down a dragon, Dad could have found him a way out of it. Dad would have screamed in that doctor’s face to do whatever he had to to fix Sam. And Dad wouldn’t let Sam get nabbed by a djinn in the first place.
“Your dad wouldn’t’a done jack for Harry and we both know it,” Bobby said. “The boy’s damn lucky he went lookin’ for John and found you ‘cause you’re twice the man that John ever was.”
And half the parent.
Dean didn’t mean to say that, it slipped out. Bobby heard it though and Dean didn’t need his praise, Dean would do the job he signed up for anyway… but Bobby wasn’t one to shut up once he got going.
“You listen here.” Bobby grabbed Dean by his shoulders and hauled his sorry ass up to look him dead in the eye. Bobby had his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flaring, he meant business.
“You’re idolizin’ the man cause he’s dead and you feel guilty. Well guess what, Dean? That don’t change facts. John was a good hunter, but he was a shitty dad to you boys. The only reason that Sam ain’t some psycho is cause of you.”
Bobby released Dean’s shoulder just so he could jab a surprisingly bony finger in Dean’s chest.
“You did fine with Sam but now you’re grown and it ain’t as easy when this one’s got a bunch of problems. But what are you gonna do? You gonna hide out in here and hope he solves ‘em all on his own? Huh?”
“No,” Dean muttered, clenching his jaw.
“What?” Bobby cupped his ear sarcastically. “I said are you gonna hide out in here havin’ a pity party for yourself just ‘cause this brother might need a little more help right now than the last one you raised did?”
“Damn it, Bobby.” Dean knocked Bobby’s hand off him and squared his shoulders. “I said no, alright? Christ.”
“Alright.” Bobby took a step back and watched Dean with his arms crossed. “So what are you gonna do?”
“I…” Dean looked around the garage like he’d find all the answers he needed there.
They weren’t all in there, but Dean did find some answers. And, with some less aggressive assistance from Bobby (dramatic old man), Dean had a decent set up going.
Neither Sam or Harry were home when Dean made it back. They were probably out running or something, Sam had turned militant in making Harry train the last few days.
It didn’t matter though, it gave Dean time to make a quick trip to the closest store so he could grab supplies. They were getting low on pretty much everything at home.
Dean grabbed a bunch of normal shit to toss in the freezer, some of the muffins Harry liked, nasty bunny food for Sam. Ice cream was a necessity, so was a case of beer.
And then, because Dean might be a shitty parent but be was an alright brother most of the time, Dean found a bag of bird food for Hedwig.
Dean took his time on the drive home, scouting out the nearby roads for somewhere that would work for what he wanted to do. There was a lot of country out in their neck of the woods, but Dean didn’t need a cluster of trees to mess things up. He needed a big empty field with trees around it…
It took some time and some hiking, but Dean found one.
Dean marked an easy enough path from the field back to where he parked his car. When the missing wheel simulators caught his eye again, Dean made himself not think about it.
Dean was making things complicated when they didn’t need to be. All he had to do was treat everything happening like a hunt with some monster he’d never encountered before. There could only be one thing at a time he could focus on, and shit that already happened had already happened.
The djinn? Couldn’t do anything about that. Dean had done what he could to hook Harry up with one of the chicks he had in his trip, but he’d failed and that was that. Dean also tried to scare Remus Lupin into making Sirius call his godson, but that didn’t seem to work either.
The crash? Already over. Dean couldn’t fix Harry’s brain himself and everyone said the aphasia would either heal up in time or it wouldn’t. Either way, Dean wasn’t a brain doctor and he couldn’t do anything except remind Harry about a name when he forgot it.
But the dragon? If Dean couldn’t get him away from it, Dean could help him get past it. Hell, if Dean hadn’t been so focused on not having his kid brother face the damn thing, Dean would have seen the obvious from the start.
If there was anything that Dean Winchester absolutely could do it was to teach someone else how to face down a nasty monster. Dean did so good with Sam that Sam made it a whole ass career.
When Dean pulled up at home, Harry was turning rocks into nifflers and Sam was reading. It was pretty par for the recent course and Dean was putting an end to it.
If Harry wanted to practice for the real dragon, then he needed to practice.
“Sam, come help me carry shit in,” Dean hollered when he left his car. Dean took a sort of protective stance in front of it when one of the nifflers started inching closer with its little nose twitching and beady eyes locked on the gleaming grill.
“Harry, make that thing a rock again before I punt it across the yard,” Dean said, shifting to protect his car.
“Okay, sorry.” Harry made the niffler turn back into a rock just as it lunged for the grill with its claws outstretched.
Dean would give it to him, he was getting real good at it. When Harry first started practicing, he couldn’t get them to lose their fur when they changed back, but it was grey and safe to kick away from the car then.
“You guys eat lunch?” Dean asked, taking in both of his brothers at once. Harry looked like he had just gotten out of shower, Sam was gulping coffee like an addict.
“No, you didn’t.” Dean rolled his eyes when he answered his own question. He popped open the back door of the car and started grabbing bags. “Come on. Lunch and then we’ll do some real practice.”
“What’s for lunch?” Harry asked, automatically trying to grab bags to carry.
“Tacos,” Dean said as he reached past Harry to give Sam a handful of bags.
“And what kind of real practice?” Sam asked.
“You’ll see,” Dean said vaguely. “And you will see, Sam. I can’t impersonate a dragon on my own, dude.”
That got Dean both of their complete attention. He wasn’t answering questions though, best to give them a reason to eat quickly so they could get the show on the road.
Dean had already loaded the car up with the shit he made with Bobby and the shit he needed from the house. All Dean had to add was the cooler of drinks and a few chairs that were inside the barn, with Sam’s totaled car that Dean wasn’t surprised to see Bobby had already began working on.
It was just like Bobby to not tell Dean when he started working on the car. Dean would have helped him, for Christ’s sake.
Stubborn, dramatic, emotional old man. Dean swore he’d have him committed to a nursing home before Harry finished school. Dean almost grinned at the thought of picturing Bobby in a nursing home. He’d be running the place and sending old biddies on hauntings in no time.
“Alright, Harry, you ready?”
Dean had the field set up how he wanted, he had Harry and Sam in place. Harry had his wand, a stack of rocks scattered around him. Sam had a homemade torch, Dean had a five foot metal pipe. The two of them also had a ‘golden egg’ between them (or what Dean could make look like an egg with a welder and scrap metal).
It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best practice they were gonna get. If it made Harry feel better to practice, then it didn’t get much more thorough unless they went to find an actual dragon to use.
Harry looked ready to train though, which was better than how Sam looked like Dean was wasting time. Sam read all his books, he found out what he could.
Dragons liked to hoard metals, they were drawn to ‘purity’ (and Dean had been firmly on Team ‘Get Laid’). They had soft stomachs and eyes. Nothing Sam found was much more use than what they were already working around.
As much as Dean hated to say it, it seemed like Dumbledore had found a decent enough plan for Harry. One spell that someone else would feed to him and the kid didn’t have to get too close to the dragon ‘cause the niffler would do it for him.
Dean would prefer if Harry had a full suit of armor and a dragon slaying sword, but whatever.
“Are you going to hit me with that?” Harry asked, looking more nervous with Dean’s pipe than Sam’s torch. It was a mistake, cause Dean only had a five foot swing while Bobby rigged that baby to shoot out at least ten feet.
“Nope.” Dean felt a real smile spread across his face. “I’m gonna see how fast those little fuckers are.”
And it was going to feel awesome.
Dean nodded at Sam to turn on the torch and then yelled, “GO!”
Dean was both disappointed and relieved to find out that nifflers were fast as fuck. Not just that, but Harry clearly decided that having his own army of ‘em only improved his odds.
They played it out a dozen times and each time Harry read his spell off to make the first niffler and then didn’t need it to make a bunch more. At one point, half the little rat bastards decided that Dean’s pipe was more interesting than the egg and they attacked that.
Dean swung ‘em around, but they refused to be tossed from a prize. They didn’t like the heat though, so they’d go fleeing when Sam got too close with the flames.
“If I can make the dragon look over one way, then they can sneak up on the other side,” Harry said after his team won another round.
Not that they had teams. It was just that if they did, Dean didn’t want to be on one with anything that didn’t respect classic cars.
“Can you turn trees into fifty virgins?” Dean asked him, joking even while he tried to find a work around for that.
“They like metals; silver, gold, platinum,” Sam chimed in. “You could use that to divert its attention.”
“Well….” Harry rocked on his feet, looking pretty sweaty from running around and tackling nifflers to rescue ‘the egg’ from them. He smiled then, a little nervous like he knew they weren’t gonna like what he had to say.
“Someone said I could fly,” Harry said. “And then I’d—”
“Be the distraction on a wooden broom?” Sam huffed and shook his head incredulously. “Dude, that’s the worst freaking idea. Who told you to do that?”
Dean mouthed the words as Harry said them:
“I don’t remember.”
Yeah, Dean had seen that coming a mile away.
“Anyone ready for a break?” Dean asked when the talk about flying reminded him of part two of ‘doing what he could since it wasn’t all that much’.
Sam tossed down the torch and followed Dean to where he’d set up shop with chairs and a cooler. Dean caught Harry’s quick look of confusion when be saw that Dean only brought two chairs.
“There’s another in the trunk, go grab it,” Dean said casually as he took one seat for himself and wouldn’t let Harry take Sam’s. Sam shot him a frown, but Dean had a plan.
Harry didn’t act like it was shitty of Dean to only bring two chairs, he just accepted the car keys so he could pop the trunk and walked off.
Sam accepted a beer and sat down just so he could stare at Dean with a stupid look on his face.
“What’s all this for?” he asked after Dean had his own drink in hand. “Don’t tell me you’re pulling some stunt because you actually think he’s going to die next weekend?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “If I was doing some shit like that then I’d take Harry to another strip club.”
Sam started to grin and Dean waited. Just like he knew what Harry was going to say earlier, he knew what Sam was going to say then too.
“You took him to a strip club?!”
Yeah, Dean just needed to get out of his own head to remember that he might not be much of a parent, but he was a damn good brother.
Dean was even more smug with himself when he could hear Harry let out a whoop clear from where the car was parked. Sam jolted, Dean just waited with a grin.
The thing was… Dean spent a lot of time thinking that Harry and Sammy were pretty alike. And they were, sure, but the djinn made Dean realize that Harry was just a little bit more Dean than he was Sam.
Dean would give up his mom for his brothers. It would kill him, but he’d do it. And Dean would soldier on, bury that shit down deep, afterwards too.
So Dean had to stop treating Harry like he would Sam and instead think about what Dean would want. If Dean were stressing over a dragon and possibly permanent brain injury, he’d want to go for a long drive to sooth his soul.
And since Harry couldn’t drive worth a damn…
“Duck, Sam,” Dean said calmly just before — whoosh.
The wind blew Sam’s hair everywhere and Dean had just avoided having the top of his own head kicked by a foot that flew over him. Sam whipped his head around, missing the kid at first because he had been on some Azazel demon-disease case when Dean had been with Harry and his friends.
Dean should have known then that Harry was at least a 50/50 split between him and Sam. That kid looked happier than could be when he was flying.
Sam eventually found Harry, zooming around in circles just below the treeline. Dean kept a close eye on him, even if he didn’t know what he would do if the kid actually fell.
“You think he should fly around the dragon to distract it?” Sam asked slowly, tracking Harry with his eyes the best either of them could do.
Harry hadn’t been lying, his broom was fast.
“Of course not,” Dean scoffed. “I think he needs to chill out and it was this or a bunch of Xanax.”
Sam also slowly relaxed for the first time in days and Dean hoped that even the low buzz of Busch would fight off some of the caffeine jitters he was rocking. It took a beer and a half, but Sam was eventually leaning back in his chair, watching Harry zip around the sky, just as momentarily peaceful as Dean.
And it was only momentary because Harry apparently thought he’d give Dean a freaking heart attack in repayment for dragon training.
“Oi! Watch this!” Harry shouted before climbing as high up as he could. Dean was watching and when Harry started flying directly at the ground, Dean stood up to shout at him.
“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!”
Harry laughed and Dean swore he lost five years off his life when - just before he smashed nose first in the frozen ground - he pulled up on the broom handle and began skimming across the field to where Dean and Sam were.
“Did you see?” Harry asked, sliding sideways to stop just in front of them. Harry was smiling wide, his eyes sparkling and cheeks red from the wind.
Dean hadn’t actually seen him that happy in a while, so he tried to not immediately start bitching. That was Sam’s job anyway.
“Did we see you almost bust your head open? Yeah,” Sam said heatedly. “Dude, cool it with the stuntman tricks.”
“I didn’t almost bust my head.” Harry laughed and Dean forgot that his cheeks dimpled like Sam’s when he was laughing, but he was reminded then of it. “Dean can tell you, it’s what they did at the quidditch match we went to. Remember, Dean?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Dean started to sit down, though something was bugging him - making the little hairs on his arms stand up. Dean swept his eyes around the field and he didn’t immediately see anything, but when Sam stiffened beside him, he knew he wasn’t imagining shit.
Harry didn’t notice anything, not at first, anyway. Harry just took off on his broom and the older two brothers were too distracted to shout another warning against slick stunts that could get him killed.
Sam casually stretched out, his hand moving to his gun. Dean bent down to scratch his ankle, grabbed his knife. Harry flew higher and shouted for them to watch, which Dean did with half his attention.
“Sixteen,” Sam said casually, feigning like he was watching Harry.
Dean shifted his body just to their four o’clock but kept his face tilted up. Whoever, whatever, was out there wasn’t setting off alarms cause it was some innocent bunny. It wouldn’t be Bobby sneaking up on them, he knew better. If Dean and Sam both were on edge, it was something.
“Oi! Don’t yell this time! Watch!”
Dean didn’t yell when Harry started flying toward the ground again. Dean did roll his eyes and grip the handle of his knife more tightly when a big ass black dog slowly padded its way out of the woods with its eyes locked on Harry.
“Aht.” Dean reached across himself and Sam to grab Sam’s wrist with his free hand when he sensed more than saw Sam twist his grip on his revolver.
“I hate him,” Sam muttered darkly, his glare locked on where Sirius sat across the field to watch Harry fly.
“Yeah, I know.”
Dean only let go of Sam’s wrist when Harry noticed the dog and jerked to a sudden stop in mid-air that nearly had him falling off his broom. Dean got why Sam could hate Sirius because Dean hated Sirius too, just a bit. Dean hated that it only took Harry a few seconds to process before he changed directions and flew toward Sirius.
The kid was too forgiving; Dean didn’t think he got that from any Winchester.