This story is set after the side stories listed on my profile. You don't have to read them to understand, however. Also, if there are any questions about the sequence of stories in the Vanilla Verse, the list is in my profile and will be updated as new stories come out.
Benjamin Beeker as Sam remembered him as a freshman looked like a pencil. Out of school, in a plush job managing a supermarket, he still looked like a no. 2 pencil. It wasn't a flattering description, whatever people thought. They usually forgot the point on the top.
"Well, you know how she was," he was saying as Sam regretted the image his mind had superimposed over the man. Beeker sneered as an avalanche of suds rained down his hand from the sponge as he washed the side of his car over the wheel well. "Looking down on us because we weren't British. Acting like the Queen and treating us like stupid lapdogs only there for her amusement."
Sam jumped back to avoid the sudden explosion of suds. Beeker's knuckles were white around the yellow sponge. His scowl almost distracted from his blue plaid board shorts and the polo shirt tucked into it.
Sam avoided looking Dean's way. He didn't want him to start snickering now.
"But, you know, that was high school. It's not like any of it matters now. Heh, heh, heh." Beeker's smile was as convincing as a denial from Paris Hilton.
Nausea gathered in his stomach. It was very bad news when the victims started sounding like parody villains. And heh, heh, hehs as actual laughs? Thatscreamed parody villains with curly mustaches.
"So you haven't seen her since your freshman year?" Sam asked, because he wanted to get out of there. Another second of this and Beeker would have to wash his car again.
"Nope," Beeker said, as if it wasn't for lack of wishing with his voodoo doll.
*
They had only been in the car two seconds before Sam asked Dean, "You get the feeling he collects women in his basement?"
"I think we should go save them."
"So Beeker was attacked by what he claimed was a walking vag—"
"Probably looking in the mirror. He wore a visor. Who does that?"
"—though he took back his statement to the police three hours after making it." Sam flipped to the next page in his notes.
"He still looked pretty shifty when you mentioned it," Dean said.
"Then Trisha and that 'sack of rags' that kept trying to wash her hair and drove her into an intersection."
"I think good old Jose helped there."
Sam nodded thoughtfully and tapped his chin as he stared at his notes. That had been another reunion he hadn't liked, especially since Dean counted fake boobs as a new woman entirely and, thus, beddable again.
"Can't say the same for their neighbors, though. Or the county office. How could they just forget an entire parcel of land?"
"Sounds Trickstery to me."
It wasn't one of their voices. Slowly, Dean and Sam lifted their heads and, even more slowly, for they knew what they would find and dreaded it, faced the backseat.
Gabriel frowned at his bright pink copy of The Baron's Harem: the Fourth Elephant and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Or could it have been Professor Peach in the library with the lead piping? Sounds like his sort of thing." He adjusted his monocle and looked at them, his eyes widening as if he had forgotten their presences. "Hey, guys. How's it hanging? I like this shirt, so if you shoot me, I'll kill everyone within five miles. Don't tempt me. Frankly, it'd be an improvement on the landscape."
Sam was worried to see Dean's hand twitch a second time.
"O-kay," Gabriel said happily, glad that was settled, pip pip, chaps. "Sam, you need to come with me."
"Over my dead body," Dean said.
"Well, if you're handing out presents—"
"Hey, both of you chill," Sam said. "What's happened, Gabriel? Is it something to do with Hermione?"
Gabriel glanced at his watch and then set his book down. Sam took note so he could pick it up later… not that he was addicted to the series or anything. "I'll get straight to the point. Hermione amnesia'd herself up in an alternate dimension."
"You threw her in an alternate dimension?" Dean asked. "I thought you liked her!"
"I didn't mean to. Really!" he said when their skeptical faces didn't flicker. He sighed. "You know how it is. You're playing a good rousing round of attack the pink fortress, things get out of hand, pillows on fire, her pitchfork wielding peasants against my pitchfork wielding peasants, then "Whoops!", an alternate dimension swallows—heh, heh—her whole. Left her knickers, though."
And he held up something red and lacy that couldn't count as an article of clothing because there wasn't enough article in it.
Sam closed his eyes, which didn't help make what he had heard sound any better. "Were you playing with real peasants?"
"Really?" Dean asked. "That's your question? Really?"
His eyes shot opened. "What's yours?" Sam regretted asking as soon as he did. He knew his brother to the bone; he would be wondering how Hermione got those 'knickers' to stay up.
Dean cleared his throat and didn't answer. He glared at Gabriel, who looked quite amused by this human ritual happening in front of him. Like Dean watching Animal Planet, Sam thought nastily. Gabriel was a god and gods thought a human being's emotions ended right at the "ARGH—!" right before the sacrificial knife went in.
Maybe that was why he hung out with Hermione. Who knew, Gabriel probably had a dozen Hermiones through the centuries.
He glared.
"Why can't you do it?"
"Becauseshemuttermuttermutter."
"What?" Dean leaned back into the steering wheel, looking as if Halloween, St. Patrick's Day and Valentine's Day had come all at once, along with all their bar and panty-dropping festivities. "Oh, that's good. Sam, we'd be doing Loki a favor because his favorite consort can't see him."
Sam, who had heard quite clearly, thanks brother dearest, asked, "Why should I help you? You sicced a chainsaw wielding maniac on me and Dean was—"
"We don't talk about that." Dean said, as all the amusement vanished off his face. "Ever."
Gabriel shrugged. "And you tried putting bloody stick through me," he said. "When does the hate stop?"
Dean and Sam looked at each other thoughtfully.
"When you're dead."
"Yeah, that sounds right."
Gabriel sighed, but didn't sound surprised. "I would like it if you did this voluntarily."
"This is the ultimate case of not our problem," Dean said, but Sam was thinking. He was thinking about Gabriel and what little he knew about his personality and about how he knew Hermione, even if sometimes he hesitated at that knowledge. He thought about everything but his own thoughts, which were racing with excitement.
He firmly told himself to stop being a bitch and said, "No, you wouldn't." He continued in Dean's surprise at the way Gabriel's face hardened as he figured out what Sam was getting at. "You don't care about whether you jerk us around. Hermione does, though."
"Loki has a heart?" Dean said out of the corner of his mouth. "For real?"
"Looks like it," Sam said grimly. "The one thing Loki values."
Gabriel could have been crystal his rage was so clear.
Then it disappeared like a magician's trick. Gabriel could have been a dead laptop, that was how much emotion he emitted.
"As I said before, I would like your consent."
"And I would like the ultimate collection of My Little Ponies," Dean said. "Doesn't mean I'll get it."
Gabriel bared his teeth at him. "Why don't you make like a tree?"
"And drop you like a snaggle-tooth rodent?" Dean said. "Glad to. Why on this green Earth would we help you?"
"Funny you should ask," Gabriel said, smiling like one of Dean's rodents. One that bit. "Because I wasn't asking you. I was talking to Gigantor."
"Is Hermione in trouble?" Sam asked, frowning to himself as he thought about all the alternate universes Gabriel could have dropped her in. With an imagination able to place people in spaceships with big-headed green aliens putting on a school dance, he dreaded to think of what demented place Hermione would be in. Aliens, saber-tooth tigers, the animated cast of Fangtasia? Who knew?
"What will happen if she stays?"
"She'll forget."
"Forget? I thought you said she did that already."
"She'll forget everything. For good," he said. "Me. You. The long week in Venezuela with Aphrodite and sex on the beach. The drink. Mostly," he added for Dean's benefit. By Dean's face he was halfway gone, or at least willing to be led there fairly quickly.
"Really?" he asked weakly. He caught Sam's eye and hastily looked away, clearing his throat as he shifted.
"Can you not?" Sam said, exasperated. Honestly, you'd think he had never aged out of puberty. He directed his next comment to Gabriel. He liked his tangents, that was clear, but Sam didn't understand how he could be so cavalier if he was so worried and gung ho about getting her out of his alternate universe. Lots of Hermiones, he reminded himself. Oh, yeah.
"Is she safe there? That's what I'm asking. Won't the other universe's Hermione try to kill her or something when she sees her?"
"Where'd you hear that?"
This time Sam shifted uncomfortably in the face of Gabriel's piercing eyes. "Hermione."
Gabriel couldn't narrow his eyes any further without blinking. "I don't like this buddy-buddy thing you two have. It's unhealthy."
"She's the witch," Dean said loudly. "She's the unhealthy one!"
Smirk growing exponentially, his eyebrows rose. His voice grated. "Did I imply differently?"
A rush. Dean's fist was over the back of the seat when Sam knocked his arm aside. It didn't matter. Gabriel had left the building.
"Dean! He's a god! You could've been snapped in two!"
The hunger for pain hadn't left his face. "He shouldn't have said that. You're not – not—"
"But I am," Sam said, thinking it was funny that Gabriel seemed to know something was off with him when Hermione had sworn not to tell him. He shook his head and the off-topic thoughts out of it, and resumed his point. "I can move things with my brain. I have premonitions. I thought you faced this."
"Call it a relapse." Dean huffed and hit the steering wheel. "Damnit. I hate that douche."
Sam definitely didn't disagree. Every time he saw Gabriel he wanted to drop something on him. Like a bucket of flesh-eating slugs. "Still," he said, and then fell silent as he didn't know where to go from there. She was a witch. Dangerous. Immensely dangerous. What she did to Dean. Turning invisible. Appearing instantly in other places, different states.
If it walks and quacks, it's a duck, Dad always said. It's the ones who look human that are the worst.
She had healed Missouri, too, he recalled. Knitted the skin together in seconds. Given her a potion that presumably gave her back the blood she lost, a potion which made Missouri flush with a healthy glow. And her first concern had been Dean's health.
And Dad had told Dean to kill Sam if all else failed.
Could you tell if someone was good—really good—based on just one facet of their life? On powers they couldn't control? Or were they monsters to the bone?
"We owe her," Sam said.
Dean snorted. "The hell we do."
"We—okay—I led Meg right to her," he said. "Without me, she wouldn't have been involved at all. Or did what she did to you and Missouri."
"And wherever she is now, whatever dimension," Dean said, waving his hand at dimension as if it was a dirty word, a word like homework, "she doesn't know about us or your messed up relationship or Gabriel-Loki weirdness or anything. I figure, she's ignoring Gabriel, she doesn't want to know. You know that, right? And you're proposing to bring her back to this shit because Gabriel pulled a Jedi mind trick on you?" He paused and Sam knew he wouldn't like what came next. "Or is it something else?"
"We can't decide for her, Dean," Sam said, ignoring the last part, which made Dean scowl. He had pulled his phone out. He scrolled through the names, headed for the H's. It wasn't anything else. And if it was—though he sincerely doubted it—then this was like throwing out her pictures. One last walk down memory lane.
He paused. Yeah, it was a really good thing Dean couldn't read his mind. It was bad to be accused of being a chick, worse was when it was actually true.
"You calling Bobby?"
"Hermione's cell phone. Gabriel'll answer it."
Sam saw a hand out of the corner of his right eye and then it knocked three times on the window. Gabriel. Sam put his phone back in his pocket and got out.
"You'll have to take both of us," Sam said to Gabriel.
Gabriel crossed his arms, looking right at place in the upscale neighborhood in loafers and tan slacks. That was his best trick, Sam thought. He blended in everywhere. Further up the street he could see Beeker's black Toyota reflecting the sun.
Dean rounded the car as Gabriel said, "Is that so?"
"Just call us the Doublemint twins," Dean said, grinning in a way that still made his anger for the entire situation clear.
Gabriel shrugged and put one hand on Dean's shoulder and the other on Sam's. "Okay, then."
*
"Where's Dean?" Sam immediately asked. They were in a small lane. What looked like several small barns were piled against each other along the street. He was hardly able to see the cobblestone street for all the people. It was a mess of pointy black hats. Yet, no one touched or bumped into him. A small space existed around him and Gabriel, like a force field.
"You said you were bringing him!"
"I lied," Gabriel said, shrugging as he glanced at a man passing in a bright green robe, "I lie. It's a thing." He caught sight of Sam's face and raised his hands plaintively. "What? It's not like I threw him into a volcano. Worrywart."
"Chainsaw wielding murderer," Sam reminded him.
Gabriel dragged his attention off a star spangled woman and frowned at Sam. "I'm not getting you. What's wrong with you? Do you ever stop jabbering? We're supposed to be saving the girl in this story. God. Amateurs."
Sam scoffed. This was rich. "When have you ever been compassionate?"
Cocking his head, Gabriel considered him like a nearly extinct water bug. "Uh, every second I don't rip your throat out. Duh."
He scoffed. "Let's just find Hermione and go."
As he followed Gabriel further down the lane and—he felt—deeper into the beast, he heard Gabriel say, "Well, I thought it was nice."
They didn't find Hermione in the first place Gabriel looked for her, or the second, or the third. They stopped at a bookstore with books in cages—movingbooks in cages—an apothecary—with some genuinely frightening wares—and a lawyer's office. No one saw them, or how Gabriel's face grew grimmer and angrier, and they didn't see Hermione.
"It is Hermione," Sam said as they walked out of a stationary shop. "Do you really think she would be in these places?"
"Oh yeah," Gabriel said. "This Hermione's boring. She could look at paper all day."
"But she wasn't," Sam felt the need to point out. He turned up his collar. It had started drizzling. The force field Gabriel magicked up around them didn't extend to the chill or the damp. Though he thought it just didn't extend to him. Gabriel looked dry enough.
Gabriel didn't give him a sour look, but Sam felt his willingness to. Sam said, "C'mon, Gabriel. She's your consort. Can't you tell these things?"
"Believe it or not, I actually forgot to put the tracker in her neck," Gabriel said, and now he did give Sam a sour look. "Hermione-hunting is a precise art."
Scowling, Sam looked away. Raindrops dripped off his lashes. The robed people clustering in the tiny street had their hoods up. Even the Hermione he knew wouldn't be out in this. She would be at home, sitting in front of a fire—if she had a fireplace—maybe reading a book or doing some freelance editing jobs to put tea in her teacups. She might be marathoning one of the eighty television shows she was addicted to or researching demons. She could be in Mumbai or Transylvania and not even experiencing this rain. Sam thought about it and realized he really didn't know what Hermione did at all, besides randomly appear in his thoughts.
They finally found Hermione at a restaurant, sitting at a table outside. Gabriel huffed at the person next to her, a large, heavy browed man whose sharp cheeks flushed as he leaned toward Hermione.
"I leave her alone for five seconds and she picks up a Cro-Magnon." He glanced sideways at Sam. "Another one."
Sam didn't think it was worth the effort to remind Gabriel he was helping him. Gabriel wouldn't see that he'd done anything offensive and Sam would just be called huffy. Besides, he kind of agreed with him that Hermione's companion did look a lot like a caveman. The knuckle-dragging, hooting and hollering kind. He stared at Hermione as if at any moment he would knock her out with her plate and drag her to a handy dark cave.
"We should get closer," Sam said.
"Right-o, captain."
They moved closer. As he did, he brushed up against other people who were as dry as Gabriel. Sure, their black capes were shiny, but they weren't wet. Neither were their pointy hats that kept trying to poke his eyes out.
Hermione and her friend weren't wet either. In fact, as they got closer, water slid down mid-air, making a rain-shield visible. It extended around several of their tables, making Sam think it wasn't only Hermione's work, but the restaurant owner's. They had to step inside the rain-shield to get closer. Sam stepped out of Alaska and into Hawaii. His shirt buzzed with static as it dried and Sam was suddenly extremely glad that Dean wasn't there, because his camera phone would be pointed straight at Sam's hair. He quickly patted it down before Gabriel saw him.
So it not only kept you dry, but dried you.
"Seriously. Weird," Sam said.
"Speak for yourself," Gabriel said. He pushed Sam forward. He stumbled into a chair, making it clang as it knocked into the table. Hermione's head came up, but she didn't take her attention off her caveman companion. Sam glared back at Gabriel. He always forgot how freaking fast that Norse nut job was for a three-foot high dude. And strong.
Gabriel motioned him forward impatiently. "Would you go?"
Rolling his eyes, Sam moved closer to the chatting couple. They were probably talking about super secret spy stuff that would cause the Apocalypse if anyone found out. That was the only reason they were so close together, her forehead an inch from the kitchen sink he used as a forehead. And then the Cro-Magnon moved, skimming her cheek with his on the way to whisper in her ear. She blushed. Sam scoffed. Classic Dean move. The numbskull couldn't even be original. Hermione looked up at the noise, right through Gabriel, who had moved closer. Hermione squinted, but the movement disappeared when her companion pulled back. She smiled at him.
"She didn't see you," Sam said. "How come? She doesn't see me either."
"It's this stupid dimension," Gabriel said. His lips pinched as he looked around him, spinning in a circle to further direct his ire at tables, buildings and black pointy hats. "Something's sucking Hermione into it, absorbing her."
"What?" Sam asked. He turned his back on the couple. Seeing Hermione focused on one thing—in this case, the Caveman—was creepy. And he didn't like being envious of some sallow, weight lifter Russian either. He threw his arms out to catch Gabriel's attention. "Am I going to get absorbed?" He thought this fact could have come up a little sooner than now.
"It doesn't want you, asshole." Gabriel nodded to Hermione. "It just wants her. Or she wants it."
"What's so great about this universe that she'd want to stay?" Sam asked. "It's rainy and stupid."
Gabriel's disgust turned into ill-concealed amusement. "Looking green there, Sammy." Sam didn't get a chance to defend himself. Gabriel went on over anything he tried to say. "What's so great is there's something attracting her to this universe. Love"—his disgust returned as Hermione laughed at something her friend said—"an exciting career, wealth. Something my girl wants bad enough to forget her obligations."
He yelled the last bit. Hermione didn't even blink.
"Obligations?" Sam asked. Gabriel looked at him. "Wait. I don't wanna know. I really don't."
"But," Gabriel said without hearing him, "I know she does want one thing in our world. Her wittle Sammy back."
He closed his eyes, ungritted his teeth, and released the death grip he had on the iron back of a chair. "Would you just get to the point."
"So we're doing an interSamtion. Then we'll gank her out of la-la land so we can get the fuck out of bizarro-world. Who ever heard of a world without gods? It's creepy."
Sam grinned slowly. "So wait a second…" He drew off at the expression of Gabriel's face, which said the trickster would leave his ass here in a flat second. But Sam thought it was telling that Hermione had been attracted to a world without gods walking around eating and killing folk. Very telling.
"There's also no hunters," Gabriel said, reading his face, which only deflated Sam a little until Gabriel added, "And you died in a forest fire when you were twelve." He had his sadistic grin back. "Aren't alternate universes fun?"
"A riot," Same muttered. He turned back to Hermione and her Russian Romeo. "So how do I get her attention?"
"Yell, scream, throw a glass at her." Gabriel poached a glass off the nearest table and chunked it at them. It spun, catching the light, on collision course with Romeo's face and Sam imagined all the tiny shards of glass, like glittering knives, making mincemeat of his face. He opened his mouth and—it went right through Romeo's forehead.
Gabriel pouted. "Can't affect anything here. Stupid universe."
Sam released a large breath. Jesus Christ. Maybe Hermione had the right idea to get sucked in. The dude was a freaking sociopath. But he was compelled forward nevertheless, his feet moving without his consent, bringing him close enough to hear their conversation.
Hermione pulled away, laughing quietly. "If we keep on, someone's bound to put two and two together. I thought we wanted to keep this quiet."
Romeo brushed a loose curl behind her ear. "You want to keep quiet. I want them all to do the arithmetic."
"Puh-lease," muttered Gabriel, beside Sam abruptly. He groaned at Sam. "Will you hurry it up? My stomach is very sensitive to this kind of crap."
"What? Hermione having a life outside yours?" Sam shook his head and didn't let him answer, just picked up the chair on the opposite side of Hermione's table and dropped it to the ground. Clang! It hit the table and then the ground, and came back as tinier clangs! until the echo died off in a few seconds.
Hermione frowned and looked around, right through Gabriel and Sam.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Romeo said, accent thick as he glanced at the other tables, obviously empty, and the street beyond, hidden by a heavy layer of rain. "My wards have not activated."
Hermione's suspicion disappeared as she laughed. "Viktor, you didn't!"
"I didn't want to be disturbed, Hermione."
"HEY!" shouted Sam, shaking the chair so it rattled against the table, making it jump and shake. "HERMIONE GRANGER! STOP FLIRTING! WHO NAMES THEIR KID VIKTOR ANYWAY."
"Yep," Gabriel said as Hermione shot to her feet, staring at the table in horror. "That'll impress a girl."
"If she can't see you or flying glasses because you don't exist here," Sam asked out of the corner of his mouth, watching Hermione spin around, her hair whipping around her face as she looked for the source of the jumping table. "How can she see that if I'm dead?"
"Dunno," Gabriel said and walked off. "Just get her to see you. I'm gonna go see a man about a horse."
Must be an imaginary one since no one could see him.
"How can you not see that?" Hermione shrieked at Viktor. "Your arm!"
His arm trembled and jumped with the force of the table underneath it. Viktor looked down and then back up at Hermione. He stood and reached for her. "Hermione. Is this a curse?"
"No, it's a—why?" She swallowed and tripped stepping away from his touch. Her voice lowered to a whisper, making Sam flinch. Viktor, too. "Why aren't you seeing this? I don't understand."
"Okay, now I really feel like shit."
"You're going to feel your ribcage in your eyeballs if you don't hurry up," Gabriel said from somewhere behind him. So he hadn't gone far. Good to know, stuck in an alternate dimension where he was dead as he was.
Sam picked up Hermione's plate—her eyes grew as wide as it as her head turned to follow it—and threw it against the wall. It smashed, pieces flying in a circle around it, and Hermione fell into a table in her quest to back away. She had her wand, trembling, pointing at the place it smashed.
Viktor swore in several angry languages. When he looked up, he took a step toward Hermione. Her wand swung at him, and though she swallowed, her eyes almost all pupil, her hand didn't waver. She held it like a hunter. Viktor swore again. Holding his hands up at her, he said, "I will get Harry Potter at Ministry. He will know what is happening."
He disappeared.
"HERMIONE!" Sam shouted again, and deftly stepped to the left when her eyes—and her wand—darted toward his spot.
"Is someone there? W-who—?"
"Sam," he said, in a much lower voice. "Sam Winchester. You remember me, right? We went to high school together. We rode those go-karts that one time. B-Beeker wrote on your car."
So sue him. If he could get some information on those attacks on Beeker and Trish while he was here, why shouldn't he? Though, now that he was here, Sam was starting to think those attacks fit a Trickster's M.O. Walking vagina did describe Beeker to a large degree. Didn't explain Trish, or how Gabriel knew about her, unless Gabriel and Hermione had one of those really open relationships where they literally shared everything about their lives. Otherwise, he didn't see Trish being that prominent on Hermione's radar.
"High school?" Hermione whispered. "But Hogwarts—"
"Her school," Gabriel supplied for Sam. Sam already knew, thank you. Gabriel had stepped up beside Sam and was watching her like his own important science experiment.
"You went there too," Sam told her quickly. "You remember Dean? Hm? You saw him last month, after Meg possessed you…" He drew off as Gabriel's head slowly turned to look at Sam.
Sam gulped. Oops. Obviously they weren't the type to share everything about their lives. Hermione hadn't told Gabriel about the possession, which was clear by the tightness in Gabriel's voice, as if he was way beyond just considering slitting his throat.
"You got her possessed."
"It wasn't exactly my first choice!"
"Of course it wasn't. These things just happen around you."
"What does that mean?"
Hermione interrupted them before Sam could question him further, or Gabriel could take out his extensive bow hunting collection. Her head shook side to side, her eyes sweeping the air in front of her as she tried to see him. "I don't understand. A demon? I don't remember that. Who are you really?"
"C'mon, Hermione. You remember me. Sam Winchester. The Blue Falcon? Go-Karts? You remember my dad and him feeding you holy water? Hm? Anything? Dean. You know him. She doesn't remember," he told Gabriel after the confusion on her face steadily grew. "It's not working."
At least she didn't suddenly 'remember' Dean. Because that wouldn't have been rubbing it in his face at all.
"Keep trying," Gabriel said.
"But—"
"Keep trying."
"Are you talking to someone?" Hermione's voice turned, if possible, even more shrill. "Is someone else there? Will you take off the concealment charm, sir? I'd like to know who I'm talking to."
"I can't," Sam said after a second's hesitation over what he should respond to first. "There isn't one. I'm human."
He knew he had it wrong as soon as Hermione and Gabriel scoffed—in sync.
"So? As am I." She squinted at the empty space left of his shoulder. "Are you one of those pureblood purists who thinks Muggleborns are some hybrid anomaly? Because, let me tell you, that explanation wouldn't hold up to the many volts I give you if you keep playing this game for one more second!"
Officially? Hermione was a stone cold killer when she was threatened.
The part of him still stuck in high school replaced killer with fox. Certain it explained a lot about his mindset lately, Sam promptly replaced the thought with happier ones. Like finding a way back to his universe once Gabriel left him there as punishment for not 'awakening' Hermione.
"You told me once, a while back, that um—" He grimaced as the burning began in his cheeks. He was so glad Dean wasn't there right then. It was onlyalmost worst that Gabriel, however, was, and was also still glaring at him. He coughed and, as the fools are wont to do, persisted. "That you were glad to have met me, even though you hate how we met. That I could be your friend without knowing your history or whatever that Muggleborn thing is, something about your parents. You said there weren't any words in the dictionary to describe it."
Gabriel groaned. "Uh, I'm nauseous. Do you think I'm pregnant?"
The thump of heavy boots interrupted his embarrassment. Sam opened his eyes and found Viktor stomping toward them. Rather, for Hermione, who blinked at the Russian like a newborn colt. Ugh.
He didn't let her speak. "I spoke to Ron at the Ministry. He says this happens often. You are possessed for days by amnesia. Is this what is happening?"
Hermione's eyebrows rose, her eyes squinty. She spoke as if she ran a full set of tests on her words before they left her lips. "You spoke to Ron."
"Yes. I just said that."
"And Ron and I are… friends?" Here her voice squeaked, chocked full of anxiety.
"There's my girl," Gabriel said, smirk as wide as his face, which was quite the achievement. "She's always thinking those important thoughts."
Viktor didn't share his sentiments. He stared at Hermione as if she had transformed into a shrieking velociraptor. "To my knowledge, yes."
"We're having lunch together? So you're my boyfriend, not Ron?"
"Let me escort you home," Viktor said, his voice quite stiff now.
Hermione slapped a hand to her heart. "Thank Merlin. Oh, no Viktor. Don't worry! I'm a, uh, alternate universe Hermione. You know, playing with the time stream, jumping universes. I'm just borrowing this—your Hermione for a bit. I'll be out in a jiffy. Gabriel? Gabriel, are you here?"
Gabriel stepped forward. Only Hermione reacted, with a big smile that turned into a glower. Viktor stood mutely, staring at this former girlfriend-turned-stranger in abject horror. Sam kind of felt the same, but for the other Hermione.
This is going to be really confusing to explain, Sam thought. It summed up his life so far to a T.
"Get me out of here," Hermione told Gabriel in a sweet voice hiding razors. Viktor's head turned to search out her invisible friend.
"My absolute pleasure," Gabriel said, and reached out.
And they were gone.
Sam blinked. Hermione shook her head, blinking and looking toward Viktor with hazy eyes. Sam's jaw dropped. He was still here. He was still here.
"No, no, no—!"
Dean swerved into the oncoming lane, scaring a van of six off road trip family vacations forever, and then swerved onto the shoulder. Dust enveloped the car. Gravel pinked against the exterior.
Dean spun in his seat. "Sam! You okay? Is that blood? What happened?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Sam said, his hand to his nose. Despite his assurances, he pulled his hand back and it was covered with blood.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand a few more times as Dean anxiously looked on, until it seemed the nosebleed had stopped. Maybe universes weren't meant to be jumped in and out of, at least not for normal people.
He looked up as Dean passed a fast food bag over the seat. Inside were napkins. The car stayed silent as he cleaned off the blood. Dean looked positively sick with the effort to stay quiet. Finally he cracked as Sam put the used napkins back in the bag.
"How'd it go?"
"It went," Sam said. "She's back herself and Gabriel still hates us."
"I'll throw away that friendship bracelet I made," Dean said, but his heart wasn't in the jibe. His eyebrows lowered as he studied Sam. His eyes were clear, and worried. "Sam…"
"I'm fine, okay? I'm fine." He glanced out the window, away from his brother's concern. The dust had settled. "Where are we?"
"Virginia. It's thirty minutes to Hermione's. We'll make dinner."
"Dean—"
"Don't say anything. You were gone for two days, Sam, and I had to do something." Here his anger turned to wicked mischievousness. "Turns out her local PD has a very friendly secretary. I have dirt." His smirk could have rivaled Gabriel's. Sam shuddered.
"So," Dean said. "Hungry?"
Hermione lived in a second floor walk-up, above a fireman, which Sam concluded from the ashy boots on the doorstep. Her doorstep was clear of dirty boots, but it was decorated with a Welcome Home mat that was thin around the edges. Sam had never been to her apartment before. He knocked.
The spitting image of Hermione opened the door. Except male, prepubescent, and eying them warily under a mop of curly brown hair. Dean and Sam exchanged glances, both of them frozen with shock. She was kind of young, wasn't she? What the hell.
"Who're you?" He was also British.
"Teddy, what have I told you," came Hermione's exasperated voice. The door opened further, giving Hermione a good view of them. She pulled Teddy away from the door and, without looking away from them, said, "Go to your room, sweetie, and get your mirror."
"But I don't want to talk to Harry."
Her face didn't change. "Teddy."
Teddy looked between Hermione and Sam and Dean, his tan face deeply conflicted between the desire to obey and the desire to study these strangers at his front step further. "Are they Gabe's friends?"
"Yeah, kid," Dean said, glancing down at him. Hermione's hand tightened on the boy's shoulder. Sam was reminded of Hermione at the café, holding her wand out and staring down invisible foes. Stone cold killer. Dean must have noticed, because he didn't say anything else, though it looked like it hurt him to hold his tongue.
"Go, Teddy, and close the door behind you."
Teddy ducked under Hermione's arm and disappeared into a hallway across the room. They stood there in silence until they heard the faint sound of a door closing.
"Just so you know," Dean said tightly, "we aren't monsters. We don't hurt kids."
"Yes, but do you consider a wizard a child?" she said without missing a beat. Her flushed cheeks darkened further. "I really can't be sure of that, can I?"
"Look, Hermione"—her glance flashed to him, and he halfway regretted it—"can we come in? We promise, we're not here to hurt you. Or Teddy."
The uncertainty in her eyes hurt, hurt worse than all those petty jealousies he felt before. She was afraid of them, of having them in the same home as her kid. It went against every single instinct inside them to hurt a child, and yet Hermione, who he had known since childhood, couldn't trust them—and had legitimate reasons for it. Hadn't Dean threatened to shoot her before? Sam, too, had treated her like a leper after finding out, however hypocritical that was. How could she have not gotten the wrong idea after that?
"Fine," she said, stepping back from the door. "But make one move toward the bedrooms and you're a black smudge on the floor."
Hermione's apartment was big—much bigger on the inside. The living-slash-dining room alone was the size of what should have been the whole apartment from the outside. Magic, he decided, or else a hell of a physics problem. Blue was everywhere, as was red and gold. The couch, the pillows, even the tablecloth and plates. A TV beeped and honked as they stepped further inside.
It was a small one, set up in an out of the way corner. Floor pillows spread out in front of it, it reminded Sam of those old radio shows, of radio shows like that infamous broadcast of Wells' The War of the Worlds, when panic spread so far. It made Sam imagine Hermione and her friends sitting around it like those old black and whites of those days when radio was the major home entertainment. Right now it was showing two white robed wizards (well, they had pointy hats) chasing a black unicorn. It was also in black and white. Sam didn't think it was commercial programming. They stopped and stared at Sam when he looked at them, that was how he knew. One made a rude noise.
Sam turned away as they resumed their chase. Wizarding programming. Who would have thought?
"So? Is that your kid?" Dean said when they had followed her into the black and white tiled kitchen. Yellow was the predominate color here. Sunny, and overlapping every counter and open cabinet in some way. The setting sun aided it with dark red tones spilling over the also-too-large-for-the-building windows. Hermione fit right into the friendly environment, even as she glared at them from in front of the sink.
"My godson," she said. "Did I look pregnant in high school? He's nine."
"Turns out you talk a lot but never say anything about yourself," Dean said. Hermione folded her arms, unimpressed. "Plus, you could be like a hundred years old. How would we know?"
"I'm 28," she said. "29 with some time-travelling accounted for. For your information. Now what do you want?"
"You two must be pretty close," Sam said, in an effort to get the tension out of her body. Her eyes transferred to him unwillingly, her lips set in misery. "For him to live with you and everything. Harry's his godfather, right?"
"It was either this or his great-aunt after his grandmother had a stroke, and on no Earth was I letting him live with Lucius Malfoy." She swallowed and looked away. "Besides, unless they're tutored or Muggleborn, wizards in Europe don't attend school until they are eleven. America has a more modern approach. They start in preschool. Virginia has very good schools, so he stays here during the week."
"That's. Wow, Hermione. That's pretty great of you." That, coming from Dean who had seriously considered shooting her after being held under her torture curse. Sam, who had never gotten the hang of kids, was mildly surprised that his brother tended to flock to them. Birds of a feather, he supposed.
Sam, to distract himself, shifted and asked, "How come you didn't tell us before?"
"This is the first time you've come to my home," she said, which was true enough. She had invited them dozens of times, but they had never took her up on it. Of course now they did, when she was royally pissed. Now their planned interrogation was in shatters from the shock.
"Now, please, what do you want? I suppose I shouldn't expect an apology for the radio silence you've given me."
"Jesus, what do you expect?" Dean scoffed in exasperation. "We're hunters. You could have given us some warning. I definitely could have used one before Meg used you to fry me like bacon."
"I said sorry for that."
"That isn't the point, is it? All we want you to do is stop doing this mystical, weird crap and start telling us stuff."
"What he means is—"
"I know exactly what he means," she snapped, not looking away from Dean. "You guys have never heard me when I tell you that I just want to help. You don't want to know about Teddy or the color of my curtains of anything about my life before this. You just want to know what I am, what I can do for you and if you have to kill me because of it—and not particularly in that order. I'll tell you. I have the power and the spells to kill you where you stand. The question youshould be asking, and yet never have is: will I? I'll answer that, too, since I'm on a roll.
"No. The only person I have killed was when I was eighteen and in the middle of a full scale battle against adult wizards. That was after a year of running and hiding, being tortured and having my classmates hunted down like animals and thrown into prison. Could I kill again? Yes. Something like Meg or another Death Eater in the heat of battle. But innocent people? No. I can't. It's not won't, or shouldn't. I just can't. Do you know how sick it makes me that you think I could—ever since you found Gabriel, you've thought that of me, and yet you claim to know me. Well, my tolerance for it has gone utterly dry. I'm done. Finished. Honestly, if you didn't trust me with your fascinating self-involved lives before this, you really won't now."
"Hermione?" Teddy said quietly. Dean and Sam turned to find him standing behind them, holding a mirror to his chest. Looking out of the mirror was a man's face, black haired and wearing thick black glasses. He held the mirror out and Hermione rushed between them to grab it. Teddy looked away from his godmother even as she tried to catch his eyes. "Harry wants to talk to you."
Without a backward glance at them, Hermione walked into the dining room. She kept her back to them. Sam saw her shoulders tense as Harry began talking in a voice too low to hear.
Teddy didn't move away from them. Rather, he studied them from under messy black hair as his toe rubbed a steady hole into the carpet.
"Reckon she's pretty pissed at you two," he said finally.
Dean snorted. He swept a hand over his hair and gave Sam a shell-shocked glance. Sam was rather feeling like he had just stepped on a landmine and found it inactive. "Maybe."
"Could be I could tell you where you're going wrong," Teddy said.
Sam's eyebrows rose. "Yeah?"
"For a price."
Teddy squinted up at them, considering how much he could milk them for. Eventually, glancing to the side at Hermione even as his hair turned a dark shade of red, he said, "There's this book I want. Costs twenty bucks."
"A book," Dean said knowingly. "Happens to be wrapped in plastic by any chance?"
"Twenty bucks, take it or leave it."
Dean took out his wallet. He only hustled people who played with fifties, so he sighed and handed one over. Teddy took it, held it up to the light and then stuffed it into his pocket with a shrug and a grin.
"You're the Winchesters, right?" he asked. They nodded and his face affected the sly boredom teenagers and kids so often used to look cooler than they really were. However, with his hair turning a brighter red and freckles appearing across his nose, Teddy actually did look cool.
"Keep this in mind then," he said. "A spider bit Hermione once. Her leg started burning and a few hours later her whole leg was just huge, even after the cure. You know what she did after it bit her? She put a cup over that spider and took it outside and let it go in the grass." He looked very impressed with his story. He ended with obvious relish. "That's Hermione."
"C'mon," Dean said, casting a wary glance toward Hermione. She was still talking to the mirror. "Fifty bucks for a spider story?"
"Hey, I never said I'd tell you how to use my information." Teddy shrugged. "Thanks, though." He then proceeded to go over to Hermione and bump hips with her, trying to get her attention and, more likely, get away from any nasty consequences.
"Looks like somebody has a Trickster mentor," Dean said darkly as he stuck his wallet back into his pocket. Sam watched Hermione put her elbow on Teddy's shoulder, and then drop it as she set the mirror—just a mirror now—on the couch and turned around to face them. Her face set in neutral, she didn't look too thrilled at their presence, but neither was she spitting mad anymore.
"Are you two staying for supper?" she asked with an irritable sigh. She didn't wait for them to finish shifting and glancing at each other before she informed them, "Because you'll need to wash up. You too, Ted."
"But I already washed up when I got home."
Hermione closed her eyes. "Is tonight the night I have to lock you in the attic?"
"We don't have an attic."
"My point exactly."
Groaning as if she was forcing him to paint his nails, Teddy shuffled out of the room. Hermione opened her eyes and nodded toward the kitchen sink behind them. "Soap is in the duck."
"Oh," Dean said. "You-you were serious."
Hermione closed her eyes again.
*
"This is really good," Dean said around a full mouth.
Sam had the decency to swallow his bite of casserole. He wiped his lips with his napkin. "Yeah. It is."
"It's Aunt Molly's," Teddy said. "She sends some home with me every weekend. She thinks Hermione can't cook."
Hermione shrugged. "I can't be perfect all the time."
Teddy frowned her way. "But you say she rubs it in your face." Dean made a half snort, half coughing noise that sounded as if he were drowning. Sam slapped his back, enjoying it.
"Attic," Hermione said. She directed her unimpressed stare onto Sam. "You never said why you came."
Sam told her.
"Did you get his autograph?" Teddy asked in the silence as the adults digested his story. Dean had turned thoughtful at the wards part. Sam hadn't thought about them much, but now that he did, he wondered if Hermione could do more than keep out a little rain.
"No, I didn't," he said, frowning in confusion. "He couldn't see me."
"I have one."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Don't brag."
"So this Viktor, is-is famous," he said. Because, of course he was.
"Viktor Krum? The best seeker ever? The only reason Europe is in the International Quidditch Playoffs?" Teddy put his hand to his heart as if the thought of Sam not knowing who his idol was gave him chest pains. "Of course he's famous."
"Of course," Dean repeated, glancing at Sam in amusement. "How did you not know that, Sam? Ignore him, Teddy. He's a dope." In a lower voice, he asked Sam, "What the hell is Quidditch?"
Teddy turned to Hermione. "You two were on a date? Why didn't you tell me this?" He gasped as a new thought occurred to him, something extravagant from the way his eyes lit up. "Are you going to go on another one? Are we going to live with him?"
"Teddy, shut up," Hermione said. Her face could get redder, but only if she took out some paint. She glared at her can of Diet Orange Slice as if this was the aluminum's fault. "You know he's married in this universe. Sam entered a universe where it was possible that I dated him. That doesn't mean I will here. That would be skeevy. You know how alternate universes work. Remember the Jurassic Park trip?"
Teddy's face—and now Sam recognized the mischievousness in it—fell. He took a deep breath and turned to Sam and Dean. "So. The Winchesters. You're kind of famous around this table. Gabe talks about you killing him a lot. Or trying to. How'd that go, by the way?"
"Only kind of famous?" Dean asked, shocked. He gave Hermione his can't believe you glance. "What's up with that?"
"Purposefully avoiding the question," Teddy said knowingly. He clicked his tongue. "I get it."
Hermione, who had barely touched her food, put down her fork, abandoning the effort entirely, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I should have done thismuch sooner."
"She's being sarcastic," Teddy informed them.
"You two jump to different universes on family vacations?" Sam asked. Teddy nodded.
"Gabe comes with us. Well. Not lately. He has a new—"
"—old—"
"—girlfriend. Kali. She's super cool."
"Kali," Sam said numbly. "The goddess. Kali the goddess?"
"Also known as the Destroyer of Worlds." Hermione's smile lacked any humor whatsoever.
"Yeah. Aunt Hermione won't let me go over there by myself."
"Probably a good idea," Sam said.
Teddy gave him the look of an unimpressed nine year old, which was pretty potent, considering his hair was blue. "She has a waterfall. Hermione won't even get me a pool."
Aunt Hermione, who currently had both hands rubbing her temple, said, "Why didn't I just get another cat?"
"Oh, well just look at this big happy family. And there's the Winchesters." He pouted at Hermione. "Honey, what are the Winchesters doing at family dinner night?"
"Gabe, hey, Gabe," Teddy said loudly, and pointed to the white flag at the end of the table when Gabriel looked at him. Hermione had pulled it up before they all sat down, but hadn't elaborated the reason for it. "The table's neutral tonight."
"I wondered at the disturbance in the force."
"Apparently," Hermione said sharply, "I was stuck in a universe and Sam here had to bail me out. You know, I remember that day, and I remember you, but I don't remember Sam or being 'sucked in.' I have this odd thought that I should remember that. Especially the stuck part. I find that very important."
"Hermione," Teddy said plaintively, pointing at the flag.
"Just because it's neutral territory doesn't mean we can't have a reasonable discussion of this humongous jerk's inability to keep me in the loop ever."
"You were shouting," Teddy said.
"Four years and this is the first time I'm hearing about it?" Dean had his face scrunched up as her voice became shriller and shriller. Bats could have understood her. Teddy's face matched his. Sam, however, kept his eyes on the tableau in front of him. Now this made his day a worthwhile one.
Gabriel's smile encompassed the room. "Look at us, having a married couple spat. And in front of your friends, too." The smile briefly dropped. "This is like one of those bad family shows that try to recreate actual families. Eugh. I hate those. Not enough sex."
"Teddy, go get your practice wand," Hermione said.
Teddy looked between Hermione and Gabriel. His hair was a dark shade of brown. Sam wasn't sure who it was he wanted to match—Hermione or Gabriel. "Why?"
Hermione didn't glance away from Gabriel. "So the Killing Curse won't be traced back to me."
"Oh, right," Teddy said, with a generous roll of his eyes as he jumped off his chair. He leaned toward Sam confidentially. "She won't, really."
"Nice to know," Sam said doubtfully.
"So is it true?" Hermione asked Gabriel. "Did I really get stuck in a universe? I mean, of course it's true, Sam told me so, but I would like to hear it from your own mouth."
"This was set in motion four years ago," Gabriel said. "It's not my fault you liked something there once you got there. You were the one who wanted to see what life could have been like for you in a few years. I'm the injured party here. I actually had to talk to these numbskulls so I could save your ass."
Hermione's lips pressed together. She closed her eyes and sat back, looking worse than tired or just plain sad. Heartbroken. That was how she looked. She didn't have enough energy to raise her voice. "Sometimes you go way too far, Gabriel."
Teddy hadn't left the table. She opened her eyes and put her hand on his shoulder. "Go get dessert, sweetie."
After Dean excused himself, claiming he wanted to walk off the banana pudding, but instead walking straight to a bar three blocks down proclaiming it was Ladies Night, Sam leaned against the Falcon with Hermione.
"I apologize for what you had to see up there," Hermione said. Her arms crossed over her chest and her voice stiff and formal, Sam sensed it wasn't the time for a joke. Not that he had a handy one in a pocket.
"Hey, who am I to say anything?" he said. He kicked at a broken part of the sidewalk. He lifted his head. "Teddy's great, though. Really. You've done a good job with him. Even with the-the stuff with Gabriel."
"The stuff," Hermione said miserably. She raised her hand to rub her forehead. "The stuff has been piling up for a few months now. You just saw the, well, it wasn't even the culmination of it. I bet that fight will have a lot more curses."
He didn't think she meant language.
"He won't tell me anything, you know?" she continued. It sounded like she needed an outlet and would have talked to her car if he wasn't there. "I thought I was okay with it, back in North Carolina, but Merlin am I not. I knew he was special from the beginning, but it's—once I met those other gods, I'm finding out that he's just like them. It's not even the killing. Those guys, they're all scum and abusers, and he never really hurts the so-so ones. What bothers me is how he sees humans. He doesn't. I believed he did and he doesn't and it sucks. Why do I always put my trust in those types of people? First Dumbledore and now him. I am seriously starting to question my judgment in life."
"Are you in love with him?" It had to be asked, didn't it? His stomach clenched, his jaw clenched as he looked at her lowered head—but he wouldn't take back the question.
She sniffed. "I used to think it meant something when he said vanilla was his favorite." She wiped her eyes as she raised her head, throwing her hair back over her shoulders. She gave the red brick wall in front of them a look a war would be proud to see. "Not anymore, though. Not anymore."
Sam thought that was all the answer he was going to get.
"And, you know, Teddy's wanting to go to summer camp with his friends this year. Painting and riding mopeds—"
"Motorbikes?"
"Those, and swimming, and what if there are sharks? What if that stupid Elzia Ives is too busy waxing her eyebrows to see him waving his arms for help? She can't even do medical magic and she thinks baking herself orange in a tanning booth is a good life choice! And Harry wants me to go the nine year memorial with him and Ginny's already trying to get me on the committee for next year's memorial and Merlin, Ted's parents were... I have to be there for him, not to serve little meat things on sticks."
Now Sam was smiling. "Hors d'oeuvres?"
"Those. And then you two freak out on me when I really thought you'd be a little more civil about it, but apparently not, and I don't hear from you in forever until you show up at my door with this horrifying story. But that seems to be my life lately. Constantly unpleasantly surprised when I open my door. Yesterday it was Kali, and she had an invitation to some beach party for me. You don't know what gods are like when they gather. They get hungry and they forget the plus one part. And Gabriel agreed! And, damnit, I've been really good at it all night, but just seeing you makes me babble like a crazy person."
Sam rewound the last few seconds of his life.
"Wait, what?" He pushed off the car and faced her. She wouldn't hold his gaze, instead turning her head toward the end of the car.
"Now I wish I could control my mouth."
"No," he said, while the sixteen year old boy inside of him finally stood up straight, "no, Hermione. Tell me what you meant."
"I just – I really wish sometimes you would stop showing up in my life. Or that I stop getting in positions where you have to save me. You're just like him sometimes. You twist my head all round. Do you think I act this ridiculously in front of Teddy? Or my friends in England? I don't. I'm actually extremely smart to them, which becomes mentally handicapped when I get in front of you."
He couldn't breathe. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying if you don't kiss me, I will most definitely cry."
He hadn't imagined what this would feel like. She was his friend and that would have been clown creepy. But if he had imagined what kissing Hermione would feel like—which he so hadn't—he wouldn't have thought it warranted a capital letter. Because kissing Hermione was serious Kissing. It felt like kissing a president, but a hot, femme fatale president who carried a wand.
She was like one of those winds that you have to plant your feet and ride out. The sort of wind that reached into every unprotected spot and squeezed. A whirlwind. He had called Hermione a tornado before, but with her hands in his hair and clutching his neck, he hadn't meant it literally until now.
"You're so hot," he said, when she pulled back for air. He realized he needed it too and breathed deeply even as she nipped at his lips.
"Sorry. Warming Charms."
Sam laughed and pulled at the belt loops on her jeans. When had she gotten on the back of the car? He didn't remember lifting her up. He hoped no cops came by and saw them there, him standing between her legs. He hoped his breath wasn't horrible.
He should have hoped that Dean didn't come by. Which he did. Right then.
"Oh my God!" he shrieked at him. Actually shrieked, which was partially explained by his next words. "Are you trying to get eaten by anteaters?"
"I actually didn't plan on ending the night that way," Hermione said. She pulled back, looking at Sam for an explanation, eyebrows raised. Sam was too busy mentally slapping himself to give her one.
"Get off the car, get off the car," Dean said, dragging Sam away from it, who in turn pulled Hermione to the sidewalk. After they were a proper distance away, Dean gave the car a deeply distrustful glare, as if it had spent all its time motoring around planning this.
He turned on them, arms spread-out. "Why am I the only responsible one here? Why me?"
"Drama much?" Hermione couldn't have sounded more like Gabriel, which would have upped her creepability factor. Would have if Sam hadn't just spent the last few minutes upping their hotness together factor.
And they were Vesuvius hot together.
(Thank God. Imagine if he'd felt this way all this time and it turned out she was cousin material. He shuddered the bad thoughts away.)
Sam felt a need to explain Dean's attitude for Hermione. "All the women had dates."
"No," Dean said. "It was Ladies Only. As in, no sausage allowed."
"Nice," Hermione said, grimacing. She quickly switched topics. "Why do you hate my car? I thought you liked it?"
"There's a curse. Dad guessed about it—"
"It wasn't my fault!" Hermione shrieked, hands flying up. "I was distressed and pissed and really pissed and your dad had it coming, frankly."
Sam cocked his head. Frankly, that explanation didn't do much for him. "Um, what?"
Hermione put a hand over her mouth, her eyes as wide as plates over them. Slowly, as she took in their expressions, which weren't nice, she lowered her hand, flinching. "So you didn't find out about the Twenty-Hours Bad Luck Charm I sent your father's way that night you left." They shook their heads. "This is embarrassing."
"Twenty Hours what?" Dean asked.
Out of the corner of his mouth, Sam said, "Is that the time he got his foot stuck in the washer at the Laundromat—"
"It was a thong," Dean said sharply. "Then there was that lawn ornament, the lightning and his beard."
Sam remembered that storm. It probably entered some obscure record of storms, that one, what with the gnome.
Hermione raised her hand, looking painfully helpful. "But those were not mortal, were they?"
Dean turned to Sam. "We have to shoot her. Once. For Dad."
"Dude, Dad never even guessed," Sam said. Really, that was not his laughter, even if it was coming out of his mouth. Dean didn't seem to buy it. He glared at Sam even as Sam shrugged. "And that gnome was covered in aluminum."
"See?" Hermione cried, overjoyed and manic. She stepped forward and playfully punched Dean's shoulder, quickly jumping back when he turned his head. "No harm done, etc. I don't like wounds. About my car."
"It's cursed," Dean said.
"Cursed."
"You cursed my dad." Dean couldn't get over this.
"It was a charm! I've had prank phone calls that were worse!"
Only because it was Gabriel on the other line.
"Seriously," Dean said, turning to Sam, who had his mouth covered as he watched the scene, "why is she the girl you picked for prom?"
"Can we get back to my car, please?" She was cute when she was trying to change the subject—and not doing a very good job of it. Dean rolled his eyes after he saw Sam's face.
Sam ignored him. "Someone tried to steal your car last year."
"It happens a few times a year, actually. Sometimes I find it on my own. Thief Repellants just slip right off it." She clicked her tongue in loving regret as she patted the trunk of the car. "He always comes back to me."
"He?" Sam smiled.
"Anyway," Dean said, giving him an annoyed glare, "how is it that it's not in some chop shop by now? Unless, of course, the last person to steal it had his appendix burst when he was in it and had to call 911. Or how about the guy who took it and then got rushed by frat boys who thought he was a hired stripper? I saw the pictures. That dude looked nothing like a chick."
"Coincidence," Hermione said. "I didn't put a curse on my car. What if Teddy and one of his friends got in it before me? I couldn't take that chance."
"And the time before that, when it was vandalized—"
"Oh come on!" Hermione threw her hands up. "I am not responsible for a stranger's inability to watch where he's going."
"A safe fell on him. Ten feet from your car."
"The business was foreclosing. Everything must go. He was barely squashed."
Sam reluctantly injected himself into the situation, since Dean was getting nowhere. "We found out who vandalized your car in high school."
She shrugged. "Beeker. So?"
"And Trish."
"Trish? The one with the—" She waved her hand vaguely around her face.
"With the—" Dean had a much raunchier vague hand wave. "—too. Yeah."
Hermione made a face as she contemplated that before turning to Sam. "Okay. So?"
"Did you know that two weeks after you left, they were both… harassed. By something supernatural."
"Or else a hell of an acid trip."
Hermione uncrossed her arms, seeming finally concerned. "What happened?"
"Trish accused some homeless guy of surprising her in her car and tried to wash her hair. While she was driving."
"A homeless guy? That doesn't sound very supernatural."
"Well, she said it was a homeless person," Sam said. "But when she gave her statement, she didn't say that. She said it was a creature from another world, green and wearing a sack of rags."
Hermione's mouth dropped open.
"Then there's Beeker." Dean didn't try to hide his amusement here. "He was turned into a giant vagina."
Hermione turned, studied her car, and then turned back, face full of confusion. "Why was it so much worse for him?"
"We have a theory about that." Sam glanced at Dean, who rubbed his chin as he stared at the car. He looked back at Hermione. "We think it's because he attacked you personally. The others were all impersonal attacks, except maybe Trish's. His was because you turned him down."
Hermione laughed and ducked her head, rubbing her hand across her face. "Okay, okay! It's cursed. I'll bring it to my old professors, see if they can strip it out." She laughed again, but not as if she found anything humorous in it. "Unbelievable."
"You sure it's the car?" Dean raised his eyebrows at her. "Could be it's a certain consort of yours?"
She couldn't look less impressed. "Oh, please, stop fishing. I'm not, by the way," she added for Sam's benefit.
"I didn't think you were," Sam said, his lips turning up, and ignored Dean's vicious muttering. She bit her lip.
After Dean finished rolling his eyes, which took an annoyingly long time, he said, "Should I leave you two alone?"
"No," Hermione said before Sam could open his mouth. She smiled at him, pointing up. "Gabriel's upstairs with Ted and I promised Andromeda no more than half an hour."
"That the grandmother?" Dean clucked his tongue when she nodded. "Wonder why she thinks Loki's dangerous. Hm. Might it be the murders—"
"But maybe," Hermione said as she stepped closer to Sam, ignoring Dean and taking him out of the conversation altogether. Her fingers twisted on her jacket's zipper. "Maybe we could go somewhere tomorrow? Lunch? Only there's this pizza place…"
"Y-yeah." Sam cleared his throat, avoiding his brother's expression out of self-preservation and focused on Hermione. He liked how her eyes lit up, more than with Gabriel or Viktor. Just for him. Her whole face got into the act, she never tried to censor herself, or pretend to play it cool. When she was angry, her whole face was angry. When she smiled, her whole soul smiled. He smiled back. "Yeah, let's do that."
"Okay. Well… here is my number." She took his hand and wrote on his palm with a blue pen. He didn't know where it came from. It tickled.
"Hermione," he said, bemused. "I already have your number."
"I know," she said, grinning as she capped the pen and stepped back. "I just always wanted to do that."
What was that about being out of his depth?
She winked, included Dean in her smile. "See you later." She patted her car and walked toward the doors. Sam watched. Dean sighed and shook his head at his brother's decision making skills.
He turned away and rolled his eyes at Sam, but fondly. "Amateur."
"What?"
Dean's voice went falsetto. "'Only there's this pizza place' and 'she's always wanted to do that.'" His voice, thankfully, lowered. Sam was surprised they weren't surrounded by cats. Dean pinned him with teasing eyes and said, "Like a fiddle."
Sam considered this. "You know, I think you're right."
Dean's stare started to turn confident. "I am? I mean, I am."
"But checking tonight's scorecard," Sam said, whipping an invisible one out of his pocket and turning the page, "let's see who got more action."
Dean hit Sam's shoulder. It hurt. He dropped the scorecard.
"C'mon. Let's hit the road. We have women to save in Beeker's basement."
fin