Don't Call Me Your Saviour
Chapter One: Down in New Orleans
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural.
Sometimes Harry just hated looking in the mirror. And right now was one of those times.
He hissed in a breath, catching sight of the reflection, and was half way turned around the cubicle of the bathroom, looking for someone who wasn't there when he realized what had happened, and turned back to the mirror, annoyed.
The guy in the mirror looked pretty pissed off himself, matching Harry glare for dark glare.
"Yeah, well screw you too asshole," Harry sighed out, scrubbing a hand over his face.
Whatever magic that had kept him looking like a male version of Jane Potter with Lily Evans' eyes had broken, either with Dumbledore's death or his fun little jog through the Veil.
After four years he still startled sometimes at the sight of the familiar stranger where his reflection used to be. At least it was happening less and less frequently as the years went by. He was just tired, and today was just a bad day for it.
And really, he told himself, beyond exasperated, as he towelled off and dragged a t-shirt over his head, he didn't look that different.
Harry was as much of a shrimp as he'd ever been, topping out at five foot six after his last growth spurt, and had the rangy kind of leanness that spoke of poor lifestyle choices and an excellent metabolism. His hair was still dark but nowadays it tended to err more towards brown than black and it bloody well curled. Harry had thought his ragamuffin mop was annoying before but at least it didn't get him called cute and adorable like the bloody curls. Personally Harry didn't see the allure. He'd tried shaving it all off in his last year of high school but he'd just looked ridiculous and after that year he'd decided to make his peace with it, and just hide it under baseball caps and knit toques.
Perhaps the biggest change to his appearance was his eyes. Once a startling clear emerald colour they had faded into a dirty pond-water green that was leaning well into the territory of hazel. The only plus was that he'd discovered he could ditch his glasses. He didn't actually need them at all to see and that had just been a ploy to make him look even more like Jane.
As a consolation prize Harry could admit, it didn't suck.
The rest of his life post-Voldemort—well, that was another story.
He'd come through the Veil in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a cornfield and had had to walk to the nearest town. That had taken him a full day, luckily the folks in Walker's Landing, Iowa had taken pity on his scrawny ass, set him up with a job waiting tables at the local dive and sent him back to high school to get a GED.
It hadn't been fun but it had kept him from spinning out on grief and betrayal, it had given Harry something to focus on, and the skills he'd needed to start looking for his real father.
He hadn't found anything, of course, not with only a name to go on. Every John Winchester he'd approached had failed the paternity tests.
Finally he'd been forced to admit that he was going to need some kind of magical help if he was going to have any hope of tracking down the right John Winchester.
It had taken the better part of the last year to figure out how magic worked in this world, what it could and could not do. What he could and could not do as a grade A, full-fledged, card-carrying member of the muggle community. As it turned out there was plenty.
It had taken him a while but he'd put together a ritual that he was sure would help him find his father, maybe his mom too, if he was lucky. That was why he was here in New Orleans. He was finally closing in on the last of the ingredients he would need to pull this off.
If everything went well he'd be painting the ritual circle on the bathroom floor in no time flat.
Harry tugged on his jeans and gave his hair enough of a rub down that it wasn't immediately apparent he had just jumped out of the shower. Truthfully he wouldn't have even bothered with the shower if he hadn't stunk of the two days on the road and one night spent sleeping on the bus terminal floor. He'd suffered through it to get across the country as fast as humanly possible from where he had been looking into a series of John Winchesters living in Seattle and consulting a woman who claimed to be a witch about the ingredients for his ritual.
He only hoped that the place he'd been sent to was still open for the night.
Somehow, even after waiting this long, the closer he got to the endzone the more impossibly impatient he became. Maybe it was because for once the goal was finally, finally in sight.
And if Harry didn't let himself think of just what he would do when he actually found John Winchester, the right one, well, that was his business.
He grabbed his jacket—wallet and room key still tucked into the pocket along with the address for the shop he needed get to—and slipped outside, locking up behind him and trying to ignore the slight stickiness that clung to the Louisiana air even in October.
The motel parking lot was pretty much empty, the grey-purple light of dusk making the shadows stretch grotesquely long and languid and Harry shivered at the prickle of wariness crawling up his spine, raising the fine hairs at the back of his neck.
Spending the better part of five years of his life with a semi-immortal practitioner of dark magic out for his head—and spending the ten years before that running from Dudley and his thugs—had given Harry better instincts for self-preservation than the average layman and he not-entirely-feigned a sudden chill and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.
He'd started carrying a switchblade and pepper spray around when he'd left Walker's Landing. One too many close calls with assholes and psychos had made him pretty religious about it actually.
He closed his hands around the pepper spray, trying to surreptitiously scout the area. He couldn't see anything, but he knew better then to assume that there was nothing there.
"This is not my night," he muttered to himself, making for the front of the motel and the main road at a jog.
Of course then, when he turned the corner, the guy was on him.
Harry grunted as his back hit asphalt, rolling out of the way as the guy reached for him, and lashing out with a kick.
He'd only meant to take the guys feet out from under him, but there was a snap, a sick crunch, and the guy fell to the ground with his leg all bent out of shape.
He'd put his arms out the brace himself, but late. Slow. And Harry was even more surprised when he didn't scream. Breaking bones hurt. Especially when you fell on them afterwards. This guy—this guy wasn't even fazed.
He turned over reaching with hands that were snarled up like claws, featuring some truly skanky inch long nails and he grabbed at Harry's sneakers.
"Hunter," he gasped out reaching for Harry, "Got you, hunter."
Since the guy didn't seem to be feeling any pain Harry had no problems kicking him in the face.
Harry scrambled to his feet, reaching for his pepper spray, but that went flying when the guy pulled him back down by the leg of his jeans.
"Let me go!" Harry growled, kicking him again, harder, "Let me go you sonofabitch!"
Harry could feel the guys jaw shatter under his foot but he still wasn't budging, clawing up his leg single-mindedly.
"Hunter. Hunter. Hunter," burbled the guy around the mess that was his face, "Gonna eat you up."
"Last chance, get the hell off or I will stab you in the face!" Harry grunted, straining and bucking as the guy got hold of his waist.
It was like the guy couldn't even hear him, couldn't feel him struggling, he just kept mumbling—hunter, hunter hunter.
Then things got extra creepy and the guy bloody well snuffled at his thigh, and Harry could feel the press of his teeth even through the thick denim, hard enough to leave marks. Looking into his glazed over eyes Harry realized that if he wasn't careful the guy would actually make a serious attempt at eating him, even though he wasn't this Hunter person.
"Screw this!"
Harry reached into his pocket and grabbed the knife, flicked the blade open and without thinking too carefully about what he was doing dug it up to the hilt in the guy's temple.
It slid in easy and Harry felt a bit of some kind of fluid ooze over his hands but the guy just kept coming and Harry, Harry started to get scared.
"Smell you, hunter. Smell you."
Harry didn't know what this guy was but he wasn't human, that much was for certain. Nothing human could take a knife to the temple and not flinch, to just keep coming, and to keep talking about it. Adrenaline pounded through him, clenching in his stomach when he felt those claw-like nails against his bare skin.
The thing, whatever it was, had his shirt rucked up and was preparing to make another go at the whole eating thing by the looks of it.
With a surge of panic infused strength he got a knee up between himself and his attacker and managed to roll them, tearing himself away and losing a shoe and a piece of shirt in the process.
Harry staggered to his feet skinning his hands as he got out of arms reach or the thing and backed up, watching it get up on its feet, settling its broken leg underneath it like it was nothing. It staggered forward reaching for him and Harry took another quick two steps back circling it.
He didn't know what to do. He didn't have any more weapons and nothing seemed to do the job of hurting it any way. He hated to admit it but his best option might just be to run and hope that no one else ran into it before he figured something out.
"Can't hide, hunter. Smell you here. Smell you everywhere. Find you. Eat you. Hunter, hunter hunter hunter."
A few of its teeth and what looked like rotting flesh of the gums dribbled out of its mouth down the front of its, surprisingly dapper if incredibly filthy, tuxedo.
"That is just gross," Harry grimaced.
Just then a car came tearing around the corner and, without slowing, barreled into the guy at top speed, leaving him a broken pile of mushy flesh wrapped around shattered, ruined bone. Harry thought he might actually be sick at the sound of it.
And the guy, the thing, it just kept trying to move.
The car screeched to a sudden halt in the middle of the parking lot and the driver stalked out, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that he'd just turned something that was at least shaped like a person into a floundering meat-sack.
"Get away from that, kid," he barked.
Uncertainly Harry moved another few paces away from what was left of his unnaturally durable assailant, and the driver, well, he lit a bloody Molotov cocktail and without hesitating threw it down on the remains, which went up in flames pretty much instantly, filling the parking lot with a lot of foul-smelling black smoke.
Harry skedaddled a few more steps back trying to block out the smell with the sleeve of his jacket, and thinking vaguely that he'd need another ten showers after this.
"You alright kid?"
"Bloody brilliant," Harry answered sarcastically, gagging a bit on the bile crawling fiery up his throat, "What was that thing?"
"Nothing you need to worry about."
"That—thing attacked and tried to eat me. I stabbed it in the head and it didn't even flinch, I'd say that is something to worry about, wouldn't you?"
The guy turned to face him and Harry was struck by how young he was. He couldn't be too much older than Harry but he carried himself with the air of someone who knew what he was doing and it made him look—bigger. But he was just a tall, light-haired, grinning, twenty-something dressed in worn jeans and a button down with the sleeves rolled up.
He turned that grin on Harry, clapped him on the shoulder, rough but friendly, and led him further away from the fiery mess.
"Look kid, go back to your room, or hell go to a bar, get dead drunk find yourself a pretty piece for the night and pretend this was all a dream. You'll be happier for it."
Harry shrugged out of his grip and glared at him.
"Look you know what that thing was right? You know it wasn't—human, wasn't natural?"
That got him nothing but rolled eyes and an exasperated sigh, "Yeah, so what?"
"So, how likely is it that another one of those things is lurking about trying to eat me?" Harry demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Not likely, kid. Now scram."
"This is about the least pleasant rescue of all time," Harry felt compelled to point out.
"Yeah well, tough luck, nice wasn't in the job description and I'm not big on overachieving," the guy said turning back to the mess on the pavement with a grimace of his own.
If running unfeeling, barely killable somethings down with gorgeous classic black muscle cars and then setting them on fire was in the job description Harry could see how niceness might not have made the cut.
"Er—what are you gonna do about the, uh, leftover bits."
"Nothing," said the guy, "There won't be anything left by the time the fire's burnt out except for a funky smelling black smear, and hey this place is skanky enough that no one came running when I lit the sonofabitch on fire so I don't think anyone'll notice."
"Great," said Harry after a moment.
"Look kid are you gonna go inside or am I gonna have to drag your ass there? Streets ain't safe. Here there be monsters. Take the damn hint!"
"Fine, fine," Harry said, "Don't get your knickers in a knot I'm going back to my room."
And he turned to do just that, even though a part of him, a slightly creepy, morbid part, wanted to watch the remains turn to goo or whatever, if only just to make sure the thing was really dead.
The young guy watched him walk all the way up to his door and fish out his room key before getting back into his car.
The door clicked open and the car did a U-turn in the parking lot.
"Hey!" Harry called out at the last minute.
"What now kid?" grumbled the guy, slowing to talk to him out the driver's side window.
"Thanks for saving my ass."
That earned him what looked like it might have been a laugh or a head shake or something. Dusk had started to turn firmly into darkness by this time and the light of the dwindling pyre wasn't enough for Harry to make out his exact expression, but he was under the impression the guy thought he was weird and kind of funny.
"You're welcome," he said, waving, "I mean it kid, inside til sunup or I'll hunt your ass down."
And then he was driving away, and Harry took his advice and locked himself back into his motel room peeling off his jacket and making for the shower with a little huff of frustration.
AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, alerted and faved, glad you guys are liking it! Hopefully nobody minds that I skated over a few of the formative years there and got right to the goodies!
As always suggestions about areas to improve (especially characterizations), ideas for plot, comments, questions and other forms of reviews are more than welcome! So put a few words in the pretty box below and make my day!
-Alba
