Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural
A/N: This is a piece that goes with my story Blood Will Out; hope you all enjoy it.
John looked at the little girl with a sense of terror. He kept his face blank and the only indicators were eyes slightly wider than usual, but John was panicking. There were monsters out there that liked to eat little girls; he had killed a lot of them, but not before they had already gotten one or two. There were always more out there. He had managed to protect his boys through their phase of being too small to be anything but food. He had taught them to shoot and to fight and to protect themselves until he could get there to destroy anything that dared hurt them.
Now this, a woman he had slept with two years ago had shown up on his doorstep desperate and angry. She had pushed the little girl into his arms, thrown the large suitcase she carried with her on the bed, and had left them there, alone. He hadn't had time to get over his shock before she was gone. The explanation given was that she just needed some time, he was the little girl's father and it was his turn to look after her.
What the hell was she thinking! She didn't know him. He could be a psychotic killer, or a hunter with monsters and demons after him and she was just leaving the screaming little girl with him. His screaming little girl, because that fact just wasn't going away. What kind of unfit, fucked up woman left her child with someone she had slept with once? The only reason she even had his phone number was because she had searched his wallet when he had been out of it. How the hell she had found him in the backwaters of Minnesota was beyond him.
She had left him a paper filled with numbers of where to contact her and she had promised to call as often as she could, but he had to do this for her because she was just about to lose it.
He watched the little girl as she screamed, he had spent the first half hour trying to calm her, but she was well into this fit and was not coming out of it any time soon. Her hair was brown and curly, bushy really. Her screaming face was red and pinched, but he thought he could see a resemblance in her nose to Dean's, could definitely see her resemblance to Sammy, who had been a king of tantrums at that age.
The screaming stopped abruptly and his ears were left ringing in the sudden silence. The little girl hiccupped and sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her balled hands. She looked at him with accusing eyes and he fidgeted in his seat.
"Who are you?" He hated that woman, because fuck, who would leave their child like that?
"I'm your daddy." He coughed because that had come out a little too high, and disgustingly panicked. The situation was FUBAR but that didn't mean he should fall to pieces. He took a deep breath and gathered all he was around him, rebuilt himself and pushed the fucked-upedness of it all to the back of his mind. He would deal with the problem at hand, there was no time for panic; there never was.
"Where's my mummy?" The girl's voice was rising, and he didn't think he could handle another screaming fit. He stood up and moved himself to his duffle bag. He dug through it and came out with what he had been looking for.
"Not here. You are going to be staying with me for a while, until your mummy comes back." She took in a deep breath, all set to start screaming again. He thrust his hand towards her and she hiccupped instead. She looked down at his hand curiously and he nudged it forward towards her again. She reached forward and picked the soft, squishy, half-melted chocolate bar out of his hand. She looked at him questioningly and held it back out to him. He closed her hand around it and pushed it to her chest.
"Chocolate." He told her, trying to get her to understand the peace offering. She nodded and looked at him like he was the biggest idiot that she had ever seen. Given the way he was bumbling through this whole mess, that did not surprise him.
"Open." Oh. He took the chocolate back and opened the package, peeling it away from the melted goo inside. He handed it back to her and she set into it with gusto. She licked the mess up and her face was soon covered. He moved to her bed and sat beside her gently, trying his best not to startle her.
She looked at him with trusting eyes; he had given her chocolate, a gift, nothing to worry about now.
"You're my daddy?" He nodded mutely, swallowing around the lump in his throat. God damn if he wasn't lost already. He tried to fight it, tried to convince himself that he would be able to find the woman, give the kid back, something, anything. She looked at him with big brown eyes and he was sunk, no going back now.
The door opened and he stood in front of it abruptly, putting himself in front of his innocent little girl and the dangers of the world. He watched Dean enter the room in trepidation because he did not want to tell them, tell them that he had been unfaithful to their mother. That he had been weak.
Dean entered the room and his sarcastic words to his little brother halted mid-sentence at his father's defensive stance. The man was ready for a fight and it made Dean tense up. He dragged Sammy into the room and slammed the door behind him. Something was going on, and inside the motel room they were definitely safer than outside of it.
"Dad, what's going on?" Dean watched as his father relaxed minutely at the fact that it was only them. He pulled Sammy away from the front of the door, away from the windows because that meant the danger was out there. He pulled Sammy closer to their father and stopped still at the sight of the chocolate-smeared little girl sitting on the bed behind his father, looking at them both curiously.
"Dean, Sammy." John motioned for both boys to sit down. They did so without saying anything, settling themselves on the bed opposite the little girl.
Sammy looked at the little girl with curiosity, a look that John didn't think ever left his youngest son's face.
"Boys, I want you to meet your sister." When in doubt, just suck it up and push through. He watched Sam light up and Dean shut down. The thirteen-year-old looked at John with betrayal plain on his young face and John felt two inches tall.
"She's going to be staying with us for a while." No explanation, no alternative, just orders and he felt better. He knew he would have to explain later, but he needed them to both just go with it for the moment, otherwise it would all come crashing back and he would panic again. He couldn't afford that, not now that he had another little life depending on him. He looked at the little girl and his gaze softened. He closed his eyes because fuck, just fuck.
Dean watched his father struggle, he struggled himself; with the blame and betrayal he felt because his father needed him now, he couldn't let him down. He turned to the young girl, probably no older than two, who was looking at them all in obvious curiosity, face still red and covered in chocolate, nose snot-filled from when she had been crying. He felt a smidgeon of amusement at his father; he had handled Sammy screaming in the same way, by throwing chocolate at him, though Dean couldn't argue with results.
Dean stood, Sammy with him and they moved closer to the little girl, their sister.
"What's your name?" She looked up at him with complete trust and Dean felt that protectiveness - which he always focused solely on his little brother because that was his job - open itself with just one look to include this little girl.
"Hermione."