Buried Secrets

*****
Buried Secrets

“Please!” Harry smacked the board above his face, his plea breaking on another terrified sob. “Please! Let me out!”

Harry’s hand was slick with the sweat that poured off his body. Even as immobile as he was, it was the adrenaline and fear that had his muscles tense and tight.

“Please!” Harry cried again, knowing nobody could hear him from where he was. “Dean! Sam! Please.”

“Hi. Is this John Winchester?”

Harry tapped his fingers nervously on the counter of the motel, waiting for the person to respond. It had been a nightmare trying to find the phone number for John Winchester, but he got lucky with a lady who owned the house he used to live in.

The lady, Jenny, not only gave Harry a phone number for John Winchester, but she chatted about his two sons - Dean and Sam - while she forced Harry to have lunch with her and her daughter.

When Harry was finally able to leave, he found a motel and checked himself in for a night. Correction, Harry tried to check himself in but the clerk wouldn’t give him a room. It took a few more tries before Harry found a motel that was rubbish enough to rent a room to a thirteen year old with no ID but cash for the night.

Harry politely asked to use the phone and he waited for the person who answered to claim themselves as John Winchester.

“He’s dead,” the voice on the other end said in a gruff way. “There something I can help you with?”

Harry’s throat constricted and he shook his head, not considering that the other person couldn’t see him. Harry slammed the motel phone on the receiver immediately, earning a glare from the clerk.

“Sorry,” Harry forced himself to say. “I just…”

Harry didn’t even finish his sentence, he just turned on his heel and jogged away, desperate to get to his room. His hands shook as he used the greasy card to unlock his door and Harry was quick to slam it shut and lock it behind him.

“Sirius Black,” Harry whispered in a mirror after throwing himself on his lumpy bed. It didn’t take Sirius long to answer, it never did. Within a few seconds, the godfather that Harry only met a month ago was smiling in the reflection.

Sirius’ smile slipped though when he saw Harry’s devastated face and before he could even ask what happened, Harry told him.

“John’s dead,” Harry said, blinking back the tears that blurred his vision. “That lady in his house gave me his number and some bloke answered and - and he’s dead, Sirius.”

“Oh.”

Sirius didn’t look as upset about it as Harry was, but it wasn’t Sirius’ father, was it? Just some bloke that nearly killed Sirius, James, Remus, and Peter ‘back in the day’.

It took Sirius a second to realize how terrible the news would be for Harry and then he was in full godfather mode as the tried to spin it to something less tragic.

“What about your brothers?” Sirius asked brightly, smiling in the mirror at Harry. “They’re- I mean… they’re not all…?”

“No idea,” Harry said dully, still processing the rollercoaster of events that happened in the last few days. “I didn’t ask, I just hung up.”

“Call them back!” Sirius said encouragingly, infusing as much optimism in his voice as possible. “Let me think… alright… if you’re twelve, then John’s boys have to be… twenty-four? Maybe twenty? They’re adults, anyway.”

Harry didn’t bother to correct Sirius on his age, even though Harry was nearly fourteen.

It was just how Sirius was, Harry had learned that in the last three weeks since leaving Hogwarts. Harry talked to his godfather every day while Sirius told Harry all the things he didn’t know about himself and helped him plot a breakout to the States.

Sirius talked a lot, he had no filter whatsoever, he didn’t lie, and he was a bit mental. Sirius was also a rather cheerful person, which Harry liked. Sirius had been the one to tell Harry about the… er… ‘incident’ that led to Harry being conceived.

Best not to think about, no teenage boy needed to know about ‘open marriages’, ‘one night stands’, or (the worst of it) ‘sex as a distraction strategy’. If it had led to Harry finding a parent that was alive and might have an opening in his life for a third son, it would be worth the trauma of it all. But it only led to yet another dead parent and Harry feeling rather crushed by it all.

Sirius prattled on about Harry calling the number back and finding his brothers while Harry nodded absently. It was a stretch to get ahold of John Winchester in the hope that he wouldn’t mind discovering he had another son. Calling up one of his grown sons? What was Harry meant to say?

‘Hi, I’m your brother. I’m sure you have a life of your own, but as I ran away from my home I wondered if I could crash with you? It doesn’t have to be permanent, but my Godfather’s in Majorca, you see.’

Harry snorted at the thought and Sirius perked up in the mirror, clearly thinking Harry was cheering up from the blow he’d been delivered.

“See?” Sirius said brightly. “It’ll be fine, pup! Just call the number back, ask for one of John’s boys. If they don’t know how to get ahold of them then… well… you know what? We’ll just deal with that if it comes up!”

“Yeah, alright,” Harry said, forcing a grin for Sirius’ benefit. “I’ll call back tomorrow.”

“There you go!”

The two of them talked about nothing important for a few more minutes - Harry described the incredibly boring town in Kansas he was in, Sirius described the colorful and fun sounding island he was in. By the time Harry disconnected, he had some newfound determination to find his brothers and hopefully endear himself to them somehow.

Returning to the Dursleys was not an option, and as fond of Sirius as Harry was… he wasn’t exactly in a great position to take on a teenager. There was the whole wanted prisoner problem along with the fact that Sirius couldn’t seem to remember Harry’s age at any given time.

And Harry already traveled so far to meet his father… what was the worst that could happen if he tried to call his brothers? Even just have lunch with them? See if they looked alike at all?

Maybe see if they had always secretly wished for a younger half-brother?

“Dean…”

Sam looked across the cemetery they had tracked the demon to and shook his head. Dean was sure that Sam was feeling a fraction of the fear and guilt that Dean did as the two of them looked through the fog and the mist, only seeing thousands of places where a fourteen year old could be hidden.

It was a fuck up, it was Dean’s fuck up.

Harry never should have been close enough to the freaking demon to get taken.

Harry was Dean’s damn responsibility, Dean’s damn brother, and Dean let him get taken.

“I know,” Dean said gruffly, refusing to think of worst case scenario. “Grab a shovel and start digging.”

Sam flinched and Dean squared his shoulders and prepared himself.

One acre of plot would take days to dig up, but they didn’t have days. Their brother was somewhere in that cemetery and if he was underground then they didn’t even have hours.

The two oldest Winchesters got to work immediately. They took opposite ends of the graveyard and began digging at any fresh plot of land they could find.

It was all they could do. It was the only information the damn demon gave them —

“Hope you boys are fast diggers.”

— and Dean wasn’t going to let his brother die.

Sam kept looking at his watch and Dean could feel it every time he did. Dean didn’t need to be told they were running out of time, he could feel it the same as if he was the one buried underground.

“C’mon, Harry,” Dean whispered as he dug ferociously in a fresh plot. “Hold on, kid. We’re coming…”

“Dean!”

Dean’s head snapped up even while his arms continued to dig on autopilot. It took a moment to find Sam through the fog and the jagged tombstones sticking up, but Sam was running back toward the car.

“What? WHAT?!” Dean yelled impatiently.

“This is a waste of time!” Sam screamed. “I’ll be back!”

Dean couldn’t believe when he saw Sam climb in the car and take off…

Sam and Harry hit it off a hell of a lot quicker than Dean and Harry had, Dean couldn’t believe his brother was just giving up that easily.

“Hold on, Harry, I’ll get you,” Dean swore, doubling his efforts.

Dean had a silver knife in his lap, a cup of holy water ready, and his leg jiggled with annoyance while he sat in the shitty diner.

Sam didn’t look nearly as annoyed, which only pissed Dean off more.

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Dean hissed at his brother. “Show some damn emotion, Sammy.”

Sam looked over at Dean and raised an eyebrow, acting like he was surprised that Dean was on edge.

“Dude, did you never think this day would come?” Sam asked too calmly. “Dad wasn’t exactly a monk after Mom died.”

“I know that,” Dean grumbled. Dean was the one who stuck around… Dean was fully aware that their dad was a whore. There wasn’t much else to do on the road—

Save people, hunt things, hook up with hot chicks at the bar. It was the family motto, probably.

—Dean just never expected to get a call from someone claiming to be his brother.

“Could be a trick,” Dean said for the tenth time since they received the call. “It could be a de—”

Dean’s argument that it could be a demon died in his throat when the door to the diner opened with a quiet jingle of the bell.

If the kid that walked in, hands stuffed in his pocket, his body tense with nerves, wasn’t Harry then Dean would peel the paint off Baby.

The kid had on a black tshirt that showed light skin. His hair was a freaking disaster — like Sammy’s — and it wasn’t until he lifted his head and Dean got a glimpse at his face that Dean knew like a punch to the gut that Harry didn’t lie to him over the phone.

“Shit,” Sam swore under his breath.

“Fuck,” Dean agreed in a whisper.

Harry was the spitting damn image of John back in his heyday all the way down to the green eyes that Dean and Sam both shared.

“Dean…”

“I know.” Dean left the knife in his lap and scrubbed his face with his hands before whistling to catch Harry’s attention.

Harry turned toward them and the three of them all wore similar looks of unease as he slowly walked around tables to get to where Dean and Sam waited. Dean looked him over as he walked, checking out the Sammy-style hairdo, the skinny frame that Dean always had, and the way the kid was practically chewing his lower lip off.

“Hi. Are you… Dean?” Harry stood across the table from Dean and glanced at him nervously.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said quickly, shaking off the pictures of a young-John that he had seen before. Dean waved a hand for Harry to sit where Dean already strategically placed the cup of holy water.

“Sit, please,” Sam said with a nice enough smile that eased some of the kid’s nerves.

Harry sat down and it was the most awkward freaking minute of Dean’s life while they all just weighed each other up. Harry told Dean on the phone that he was nearly fourteen and that his ‘mum’s friend’ told him about John. Jenny gave Harry John’s number, Harry called Dean, Dean told him John was dead, Harry called back the next day.

Harry cleared his throat quietly and then took a sip of the water, probably for something to do. Dean watched him closely and didn’t see any reaction at all, which cut out demon.

“So… tell us about you!” Sam said, breaking the tension. “You’re from the UK?”

“Surrey,” Harry said, his eyes continuing to flick toward Dean even though it was Sam he answered. “Your- our? - your dad met my mum in London though?”

“Yeah, we know.” Sam flashed a smile and shrugged when Harry gave him a curious look. “Dad kept a journal—”

Harry winced.

“—and fifteen years ago this Halloween, he said he was on a job in London.”

Dean read the same entry Sam did. They both poured over Dad’s journal after getting Harry’s call, checking the entire year that Dad could have knocked up some chick that made a British kid. There had only been one entry around that time that fit.

Dad had been working a job in Nevada, some unusual signs of activity happening. Dad suspected it was a coven of witches and he tracked their coven back to London to try and end them. If he managed it or not, Dean had no idea. The entry for October 31st only said ‘Lily P. London, witch?’

Dean didn’t remember Dad ditching him and Sam to go to London, but they must have been dumped with Bobby or left in a motel alone for a few days. Neither instance was uncommon, it just must not have been memorable enough for Dean to even think twice about it.

“Where is your mom?” Sam asked Harry.

Harry shifted in his chair and looked at his cup of water.

“Dead,” he said quietly. “She died when I was a baby.”

Dean wasn’t a monster, it was sad that Harry lost his mom just like Dean and Sam had. It was probably for the best that Harry didn’t grow up with John though.

No need for a third Winchester to be as messed up as Dean and Sam were.

“Sorry to hear that,” Sam said, sounding truly sorry. Dean didn’t have to look to know that Sam would be oozing that ‘feelings’ crap that he shared so much more easily than Dean ever could.

“What was her name?” Dean asked bluntly, ignoring when Sam kicked his ankle under the table.

Harry looked up at Dean and it was like looking in a freaking mirror.

“Lily,” Harry said, confirming what Dean had already guessed. “Lily Potter.”

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

Harry blinked at them, “Sorry?”

Sam could feel his chest ripping in two as he toyed with the wiring in the console.

“Come on… come on…” Sam whispered. “Work… work… YES!!”

The compact excavator in the lot that Sam broke into roared to life and Sam didn’t think twice about the Impala before tearing out on the excavator. Sam tore down the fence that he had originally climbed and worked the gearshift as he mashed the gas to get back to the cemetery as quickly as possible.

Two guys could never dig up one teenage boy before he ran out of oxygen. But a guy with an excavator and a ground penetrating radar stolen from the water company?

They might have half a chance at getting their brother back.

Dean’s head snapped up when Sam roared in the cemetery. Dean looked as messed up as Sam felt and he was pouring sweat as proof of his work to find Harry.

“WE AREN’T MOWING THE DAMN LAWN, SAM!” Dean yelled when Sam climbed out of the excavator and yanked the GPR to the ground. “GET YOUR ASS BACK IN AND DIG!”

“Shut the hell up,” Sam snapped. Sam had never used the radar that he stole and he only had so much time to figure it out. The machine seemed to be common sense… push it around, watch the screen, interpret the readings.

“Get in that and follow me,” Sam barked at his brother, tilting his head toward the machine. “Do not dig until I say so, it could crush him.”

Finally understanding Sam’s plan, Dean tossed his muddy shovel to the side and scrambled up in the excavator.

Sam began pushing the GPR around, his eyes glued to the screen, and prayed to God that they would find their little brother.

Sam couldn’t help the way he kept turning around in his seat, glancing at the teenager sleeping in the back row of the Impala.

“Dude.” Sam turned back to Dean and shook his head. “This is nuts. Look at him!”

Harry was their brother. Their actual half-brother. Sure, they were headed to Bobby’s for some proof, but what more did they need when the kid looked just like them?

“I’ve seen him,” Dean said tensely, glancing in the mirror, then back at the road. “I don’t know what you’re so damn happy about, what the hell do we do with a kid, Sam?”

“I… have no idea,” Sam said slowly, staying quiet so he didn’t wake up their brother. “Shit. Dean, he’s got nobody. What do we do? Take him with us on jobs? Drag him to go hunt down the Yellow-Eyed Demon?”

They couldn’t do that. Harry was a kid, only ‘nearly fourteen’. And unlike Sam and Dean, Harry was just a normal kid. A normal, orphaned, kid who ran away from his aunt’s house to find his biological dad.

“Do we return him?” Sam said, finally starting to panic about the five foot tall, hundred pound responsibility they had.

“I kind of doubt he came with a receipt, Sammy,” Dean scoffed, his eyes trained on the dark highway they flew down. “If he’s a Winchester then he stays with us. What kind of shitty relatives don’t notice when their kid runs away, huh?”

Sam stared at his brother long enough for Dean to glance over at him and catch the joke in Sam’s deadpan expression.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grinned wryly. “I rest my case. The kid sticks with us for now. We’ll just hang out at Bobby’s and cool it with the cases for a while.”

Sam didn’t think Dean meant it, but damn if he didn’t prove it as soon as they arrived at Bobby’s.

“Bobby! Hey!” Dean was the first one out of the car and Sam kept himself from grinning when Dean opened the back door of the Impala like it was normal to have a ride along. “You mind cleaning the place up a bit? We were thinking about crashing for a while?”

Bobby knew the two of them were off to meet up with the person who claimed to be their brother, they’d been at his house since Dad died. Bobby waited to answer until Harry climbed out of the car and blinked through the sunlight at Bobby.

Sam wondered if Harry would grow to like Bobby as much as Sam did. Bobby was gruff and made himself seem unlikeable, but - aside from Dean - Bobby was the closest thing Sam had to a parent when he’d been growing up.

“S’pose I can put your butts to work on cleaning out some bedrooms,” Bobby said, watching Harry closely. “Damn if he don’t look like your daddy.”

Sam saw Harry straighten up and flash Bobby a smile. Dean put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and guided him through the junkyard to get to the front door of Bobby’s place. All of them had to navigate around and over stacks of books, piles of scrap metal, and stray tools inside the house to get to the living room.

“Anyone for a drink?” Bobby asked, looking pointedly at Harry.

“Harry’s already had a drink, but I’d take a beer,” Dean said with his own pointed look.

Harry drank the holy water, stepped over the line of salt they planted. He accepted the silver knife with only a questioning look when Dean handed it to him in the car. Harry was just a kid, just a normal kid who had the shit luck of the Winchesters.

“Harry, beer?” Bobby called over his shoulder, accepting Dean’s explanation as he went to grab them all some drinks.

Harry had wide eyes as he took in the comfortable clutter of Bobby’s house. It wasn’t until Dean practically shoved the kid to take a seat on the couch that Harry seemed like he heard Bobby’s question.

“Er… water?” Harry said slowly, glancing between Sam and Dean both.

“You’re fourteen, nobody cares if you have a beer,” Dean grinned. Sam cleared his throat and Dean rolled his eyes. “Alright, Sammy cares, but if you peel the label off you can tell him it’s apple juice.”

“I was eight,” Sam said, chuckling as he remembered the prank that Dean once pulled on him. Sam took one of the two recliners and Dean sank down beside Harry.

“Yeah, and you cried until I had to go find you a real apple juice,” Dean said, winking at Harry.

Harry grinned and relaxed beside Dean, looking like he just belonged. If they tossed a denim or leather jacket on him, he’d just be a freaking mini-Winchester, relaxing at Bobby’s. When Bobby returned and handed out bottles of beer, Harry looked even more like a Winchester.

Dean laughed louder than anyone when Harry took a drink and immediately twisted his face up in absolute disgust.

“Forget the DNA test, you looked just like Sammy!” Dean said.

Sam glanced at Bobby and knew they were thinking the same thing. That was the first real laugh they heard from Dean since Dad died and they lost the Colt.

Sam didn’t care where Harry came from, he was just damn glad that they had him.

Harry had long since given up on screaming for help, all he could do was count his breaths as he wondered how many he had left.

How long had he been buried? Had it been an hour? Two? Seven? How long could he go without fresh oxygen?

Would his brothers remember to call Sirius? Tell him about Harry’s death so Sirius wasn’t calling him every day? Were his brothers worried?

They had barely began getting to know each other… would they even remember Harry within a few years? Their lives were so exciting… so busy and heroic… Harry was just their kid brother, the odd untrained-wizard that they decided to take with them while they worked their jobs…

Harry didn’t tell them, he’d never get a chance it seemed, but Harry thought they were real heroes.

Harry was practically vibrating with excitement in the backseat of the Impala. The windows were down, the radio was blaring, and Harry was going on a hunting trip with his brothers.

Dean and Sam only told Harry about their job after Harry had an accidental bout of magic that they witnessed.

A car had backfired in the junkyard that Bobby lived in the center of and Harry jolted. When Harry jumped, a window behind him cracked. Sam had been the one to notice and it didn’t take much prodding for Harry to tell Sam he was a wizard.

It didn’t really matter, surely. The Dursleys knew about it and nobody made a fuss. If Harry’s aunt and uncle could know, why couldn’t his brothers?

It belatedly crossed Harry’s mind that Sam might not be very enthusiastic about Harry’s admission, the Dursleys certainly never had been, but Sam had seemed… excited, really.

Sam brought Dean and Bobby inside, they’d been out working on cars, and Harry had to repeat his story to them all. Harry had his wand in his backpack, but he couldn’t prove magic with it. Instead, Harry used the mirror to call for Sirius.

“I’ll be damned,” Bobby whistled, watching Sirius show off as he shifted from man to dog over and over. “I guess John was right, it was witches he’d been trackin’.”

“Wizards, actually,” Sirius said perfectly cheerfully in the mirror. Sirius looked as if he were on a beach, hopefully a private one as he was blatantly showing off magic through the mirror. “When we asked Lils to distract him and obliviate us from his memory, we didn’t expect her to shag the bloke.”

“Wait, what?” Dean squinted at Sirius in the mirror so hard that Harry almost grinned. “You had Harry’s mom mess with our dad’s memory?”

“Self-preservation, it’s not like he didn’t get anything out of it.” Sirius winked cheekily and then grinned at Harry. “Have fun, pup. I suppose that permission slip is rubbish now.”

It was.

Harry had no intention on going back to Hogwarts, not when he could spend his time with his brothers.

That was why when, a week after the magic secret was let out of the hat, Dean and Sam said they had to go work a job, Harry begged and pleaded to be taken along.

Sam said no, Dean said hell no, Bobby said they went ‘on the job’ when they were younger than Harry.

Harry had… sort of thought his brothers were traveling mechanics or possibly even secret rockstars, but hunters? Hunters that went and destroyed dark creatures that were hurting muggles? That was brilliant.

Bobby argued with Harry’s brothers until they relented and said Harry could go with them. Harry was supposed to follow orders, stay quiet, stay safe.

Harry had never been good with any of those rules before, but he swore he’d try for the chance to go ‘hunting’ with his brothers.

It was an interesting case, to say the least.

Harry had never heard of real life zombies, but the girl that died in a crash and was brought back to life had definitely been a zombie. Dean was irritated at Harry when he left the safety of the car to try and help after the girl attacked Sam and broke his wrist, but Harry was giddy over it.

“Admit it, if I wasn’t there then you might have died,” Harry said, grinning at Dean’s look of irritation.

They found a twenty-four hour diner after they left the hospital that put a cast on Sam’s wrist and Dean ordered all three of them burgers and pie. Harry was starving and ate like it, finishing his burger off as quickly as Dean did.

“If you didn’t go swiping that knife around like a rookie then I wouldn’t have this.” Dean held his arm up, showing the cut that Harry didn’t mean to leave on him.

“Er… if you’d show me how to use a knife like you do then I wouldn’t be a rookie?” Harry suggested, his confidence taking a dip down to a pool of nerves. Harry didn’t know Dean well enough to know if he was angry or not… a quick glance at Sam didn’t help, he still looked rather hazy from whatever medicine he got at the hospital.

Dean grunted and then took a stab at his pie, scooping up a large forkful.

“A freaking wizard wanting to be a hunter,” Dean muttered. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

Harry perked up at the way Dean smiled a little bit and his eyes softened when they met Harry’s.

“So you’ll teach me?” Harry asked eagerly.

“Fine. Only because this stings and I’m not letting you stab me again,” Dean said warningly.

Harry beamed and then started eating his pie when Dean told him to, over the moon excited.

Having two older brothers was the best thing to ever happen to Harry, Harry had no idea why Ron had complained about his so often.

“Here!” Sam screamed. “Dean! Dig!”

Dean didn’t hesitate. Dean trusted Sam to get the tech right, finding the place where the demon left their little brother. As soon as Sam ran from the fresh plot to grab a shovel, Dean started operating the excavator. He kept the bulk of the body off the plot, he couldn’t risk crushing Harry, but the arm scooped the dirt a hell of a lot faster than Dean could have with a shovel.

With every scoop of dirt, Dean chanted the same thing over and over under his breath.

“C’mon, Harry… c’mon, Harry… be there, kid…”

Three months with Harry wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. Dean finally felt like Dad dying and Dean living made sense.

Dad wouldn’t have been able to take care of Harry, he’d never done it for either of his other sons. But Dean? Dean raised Sammy, Dean could take care of him.

Dean could. The demon… fuck. That was a fuck up, one Dean would make sure never happened again if he could just get his baby brother out of the ground.

The scoop scraped something that wasn’t dirt and Dean raised the arm up so he could climb down and jump in the hole he dug.

“SAM! SAM! HURRY!” Dean yelled. He started tearing at the boards on the cheap wooden coffin with just his hands. The splinters that ingrained themselves in Dean’s fingertips weren’t even a blip on his freaking radar. What were a few splinters when Harry was possibly inside that coffin?

“HARRY?” Dean kicked on the coffin and tried to get a response. “KID? HARRY IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, SAY SOMETHING!”

Dean locked his body in place for only a second, just long enough to listen for a response that never came.

Then he started tearing the coffin apart to get to his brother.

Dean just needed one more chance…

“This isn’t a freaking game!” Dean yelled. “You focus or you die!”

Harry flinched and nearly dropped the paintball gun he’d been practicing with. The three brothers had been out in the junkyard, using paintball guns to practice some real training with Harry and it was going about as badly as possible. Sam’s laughter over the pink ball he hit Harry in the chest with died and Dean was suddenly the bad guy.

“Sorry,” Harry said quietly, looking down at the ground. “I’ll try harder, I swear.”

Dean sighed and hated the way Harry said that. Why’d he have to go and sound like Dean had when he was a kid for?

“Damn.” Dean swore at himself and wiped his face with one hand.

It wasn’t Harry’s fault that he was a crap shot and a sitting duck in almost any job they might take up. Harry spent the last nearly fourteen years not being taught to shoot and cut with an aim to kill.

Sam was staring Dean down with his ‘fix it now, dumbass’ look and Dean sighed before focusing on his youngest brother.

“You’re doing fine,” Dean said awkwardly. He reached out and patted Harry on the shoulder twice. Harry peeked up at Dean and there was a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“‘Focus or die’,” Harry repeated. “That’s sort of rubbish advice.”

“You know what else is rubbish? British,” Dean said, nodding his head at Harry and holding back his own smile. It wasn’t bad advice, it was good advice, but a kid who wasn’t raised to be a soldier might not see it, thankfully. “Load up and let’s go again.”

“He knows British isn’t a language, right?” Harry whispered to Sam while they refilled the tanks of the paintball guns with multicolored balls.

“He was just kidding,” Sam assured him. When Sam glanced at their oldest brother, he pulled a face. “I hope.”

The second match went better than the first. Dean teamed up with Harry to kick Sam’s ass and they managed to nail him with half a dozen paintballs. Harry did so damn good that Dean couldn’t even find where he was firing from.

“Alright, Houdini, where you at?” Dean called once Sam begged for mercy. Dean looked around the cars for a moment, only beginning to worry when he couldn’t find Harry anywhere. “Harry?!”

Out of thin freaking air, Harry’s head suddenly appeared just in front of a tractor that had been in the yard longer than Dean had been alive.

“Tada!” Harry held a purple sheet in one hand and his paintball gun in the other. “Say I win or I’ll shoot you next.”

“Where the hell did you get that?” Dean asked, thinking of the cursed objects Bobby kept in the basement.

“It’s mine,” Harry said, his voice too genuine to be a lie. “You want to try?”

Dean dropped his gun to the ground and slowly accepted the sheet. It seemed like a big deal when Harry let him take it - Harry never let Dean or Sam touch his magic mirror - and Dean did grin when he held it up.

“So I put this on and I’ll be invisible?” Dean asked. Harry nodded and Dean tossed it over his head.

“Holy shit!” Sam laughed and stared directly at Dean. “Dude, you’re gone!”

“Yeah?” Dean stretched an arm out and looked down, through the haze that the sheet caused over his face, and let out his own surprised laugh. “Dude! I’m gone!”

Harry stayed where he was seated on the ground and just grinned up at Dean.

“You think a demon can find someone under it?” Harry asked curiously. “If not, I bet we could exorcise them more easily if one of us was hidden.”

Dean had agreed completely. If one of the three stayed under a cloak and read the chant, it would be a piece of cake.

Dean should have known better. Nothing was ever a piece of cake in their lives.

Sam swallowed hard and focused only on the effort of ripping open the coffin. If Sam focused on the physical burn of muscles that had been tracking a kid for too many hours, he wouldn’t think about what might be inside the coffin…

Dean kept whispering something too quiet for Sam to hear in the crunching of boards ripped out by hand and shovel. Sam probably couldn’t have heard him even if Dean was screaming, his heart was pounding in his ears too loudly to even hear if Harry himself had been screaming.

The first board ripped away and Sam could see the soft brown leather… the leather of the jacket that Dean got Harry.

“Now you’re a Winchester,” Dean said as he tossed it to Harry for his fourteenth birthday. It wasn’t a big deal, but they did pick up a cake and a few things for Harry. Sam wanted Harry to feel like a kid, Dewan wanted to eat cake and dress Harry up in hunter-garb.

“We’ll get you some fake ID’s and an addiction and nobody’ll ever know you didn’t grow up in motels with us,” Dean said after Harry pulled the jacket on.

Sam rolled his eyes but Harry beamed. That was the night that Harry told Sam that all he’d ever wanted was a family, one that he shyly confessed that he felt he found in his brothers.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice was strangled when the next board revealed a silky and familiar purple sheet. A cloak, that was what Harry called it.

“I know,” Dean grunted. When he began to pry up the next board with his hands that were cut and bleeding, Sam straddled the coffin and reached in as soon as there was a Harry sized hole made.

It was so stupid, but Sam never felt less like crying than he did as he gripped the front of his little brother’s shirt and hauled his limp body from the coffin. Sam juggled Harry up out of the hole, laying him down gently on the ground beside the sloppy hole they dug.

There were water droplets falling on Harry, illuminated only by the half-moon shining directly above him. Harry’s face had never been so pale, his lips had never been so blue.

“No!” Sam cried, his ear to Harry’s lips as he waited for any breath. “You don’t get to die, Harry. You don’t get to leave us.”

Sam began chest compressions while Dean immediately fell in a familiar spot at Harry’s head to give rescue breaths.

Harry couldn’t die… he just couldn’t…

Sam was laughing so hard that he had tears in his eyes.

Harry was in the backseat of the Impala trying to read the ritual for demon exorcism.

And he sucked at it.

“I thought you said spells are in Latin?” Sam said, barely able to speak clearly through his laughter. “I swear you’re ordering pizza back there.”

“Or having phone sex with an Italian hooker,” Dean said, grinning as broadly as Sam had ever seen.

Harry frowned at them with a pout and slammed their dad’s journal shut hard.

“One of you can read the ritual and I’ll help interrogate,” Harry said with his arms crossed. “If my Latin is soo bloody terrible.”

“Hey! What’d we say about that?” Dean looked up in the rearview mirror and made a serious face at Harry. “If you’re going to swear, do it the right fucking way.”

Sam was the one to sigh then, but it made Harry grin.

“My fucking bad,” Harry said, the word sounding stiff and unnatural in his accented and juvenile voice. It made Sam laugh again and Dean winked in the mirror approvingly.

“Atta boy,” Dean said cheerfully. “And you can’t be on team interrogation because we don’t want the demons to know about you,” Dean said again. “So keep practicing. You’re going ghost while we gank this fucker.”

“Dean, can you at least pretend that we don’t want Harry to start cussing?” Sam asked Dean, knowing it was a losing battle.

“Who cares?” Dean said with a careless shrug. Dean was already fiddling with the radio, flipping to a new station. “It’s not like he’s going to infect those other baby witches and wizards.”

Sam tilted his head in silent agreement. Harry had an owl bring him a letter the day after his birthday, listing supplies he would need for another year at magic school. Dean threw a fit over it, swearing that Harry wasn’t going to any school full of witches and wizards.

Then Harry had locked himself in his room, only talking to Bobby.

Bobby wheedled it out of Harry that Harry didn’t want to go back to school, he just didn’t like thinking that Dean would ever consider him dangerous or freaky.

All three Winchesters slept better knowing that Harry wouldn’t go back to the boarding school. Sam especially slept easier when he learned about the messed up shit that happened at Harry’s school.

Basilisks? Dementors?

Sam finally understood why Dean always babied him because the more Harry talked about Hogwarts, the more Sam wanted to baby him.

Instead, he let the little monster talk him and Dean into bringing him along when they got word of a demon in northern Kentucky.

The three brothers picked on each other and sang along to the shitty rock songs Dean played until they pulled up at the last place the demon had possibly been sighted at.

“Put the blanket on and keep your trap shut,” Dean said as he cut the engine and headlights, coasting in the parking lot incognito.

“Bossy,” Harry breathed.

“Bratty,” Dean countered.

“Jerks,” Sam said to them both.

“Bitch,” Harry and Dean said at the exact same time.

“Jinx, you owe me a coke!” Harry claimed cheerfully just before he threw the cloak over his head and disappeared entirely from sight.

“We gank this demon and I’ll buy you a rum and coke,” Dean promised Harry. “Everyone focus now.”

“Focus or die,” Harry quipped, as much of a smartass as Dean.

Harry couldn’t open his eyes, but he could feel.

Harry could feel cold, wet, earth beneath him and hands on his face, slapping him and knocking his head from side to side.

“Harry? Can you hear me?”

Harry groaned inaudibly as the voice slowly gave itself an identity in his mind.

“Sam?” Harry’s voice was weak, barely a whisper, but Sam heard him.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Sam said, his voice urgent and too loud in Harry’s ears. “Hang on, kid. An ambulance is coming, okay? It’s on its way.”

That didn’t make any sense to Harry and the entire world came in focus after a hard weight slammed on his chest. Harry gasped, his throat and lungs burning as he did, and his body sat upright of its own accord.

Light pierced through the darkness as Harry opened his eyes and strong hands gently laid him back to the ground. Harry could see the blurred outlines of his brothers’ faces and the mixture of emotions they were both too tired to hide.

“The demon,” Harry wheezed out, his eyelids already fluttering back shut. “Did we get it?”

“Yeah, we did. You did good,” Dean said, too quickly for Harry to believe him.

“You found me,” Harry said instead, pained by every syllable he forced out. “You saved me.”

Dean was panting audibly while he patted Harry’s face, touching every inch of it like he needed to memorize the feel.

“Course we did,” Dean said, wheezing some. “We’re your brothers, kid. We’re always going to save your punk ass when you’re in trouble.”

“We’re family,” Sam agreed, his voice soft yet firm.

Harry smiled faintly, relieved and touched in equal measure.

“Family,” he murmured. “That’s nice.”

Harry was trapped in his own mind, screaming and unable to take control of his body.

“I can hear you, you know,” Harry’s voice said, sounding all wrong to Harry’s ears. It was the demon that spoke, he only used Harry’s vocal cords but none of Harry’s accent or inflection.

“This isn’t personal between us,” Harry said calmly as his hands continued to pick the lock on the funeral home. “It’s your bad luck to be related to John Winchester’s boys. It was my good luck to find you.”

Harry screamed even louder, protesting over the demon’s ideas of luck. It wasn’t bad luck to be related to Sam and Dean, it was the best luck of Harry’s life.

All Harry expected to find in the States was a biological father, instead Harry found two older brothers who accepted him with open arms.

“Yes, yes, very touching,” the demon sneered. There was a pop from the lock it had been toying with with a silver tool and Harry could feel his face being stretched in a smile.

“Come now, Harry, let’s pick you a nice coffin. It’s not every day that you get to attend your own funeral.”

Harry begged with the demon in his mind, offering anything to just be let go. Harry even struggled against his own body and screamed louder the more he realized that he couldn’t control his body at all.

The demon laughed lightly and shook Harry’s head while trailing a hand along on a heavy marble coffin.

“This must be terrible.” Harry’s voice was cool and mocking while his eyes focused on a cheap looking coffin made of brown wood in the back of the funeral home. “Poor, Harry. Do you think your big brothers will save you? They won’t, you know. But I will greatly enjoy savoring the looks on their faces as they realize their baby brother is as dead as Daddy.”

That was the worst part. The demon was going to ride Harry’s body inside the coffin then flee just so it could watch Sam and Dean suffer and struggle to save Harry.

Harry could hear the entire plot in his own thoughts and it hurt more to know that Harry was just being used as a pawn to break his brothers.

“This is the one,” Harry’s voice said happily as it opened the lid on the wooden coffin. “Oh, yes, you’ll be comfortable here while I just go find a nice strong man to bury you.”

Harry’s mental screams turned verbal as soon as the demon made him climb in the coffin and close the lid. Harry started slamming the top of it, trying to break the wood and save himself.

“HELP!” Harry screamed as loudly as he could. “HELP! PLEASE! SOMEBODY HELP!”

Someone answered Harry’s screams - the demon as it returned in a different body.

Harry didn’t stop screaming the entire time that he felt the coffin being dragged from the funeral home. Harry’s screams increased when he was jarred and jolted by what seemed to be a dump in a hole.

And when the dirt began to pound on the top of the coffin, burying Harry in a grave that he didn’t think he would ever escape from, Harry screamed that much louder.

“DEAN! SAM! PLEASE!” Harry smacked the board above his face, his plea breaking on another terrified sob. “LET ME OUT! PLEASE!”

Harry had blacked out before his brothers found him, but all that mattered in the end was that they never gave up the search.