SuperNormal

Chapter 2

By Byakugan.

If you think I own any of this, the jokes on you. My bank account is nearly empty. Hell, I'd love to get millions of dollars a year for fucking up folklore...!

~! #$%^&*()_+

Azazel stepped out of the passenger side of my space expanded car, one hand stuck in the chest of the Angel who'd thought to ally with him against me. "Round two!" yellow eyes said with a grin.

Immediately lightning bolts and hail began raining down from the skies. I appareted out of the way and returned fire with a stream of fire which he shielded with the angel's body. Using the angel's vessel to ward off the flame, which probably wouldn't have hurt him anyways, Azazel flew at me. I apparated again and began firing curses at where I used to be. Most of them missed, but one bludgeoner struck him in the side and sent him flying off through a couple of trees.

"That's getting really annoying pagan!" the arch demon shouted, releasing a series of dark shadowy bolts of light at me. I left a shield where I was to gauge the kind of damage those attack would do and apparated again, leaving a mirror image in my place. As the attacks impacted I staggered against the side of my car. Damn those attacks were strong! Calling on the power of the deathly hallows I summoned ghosts of those who had faced the leader of hell before and turned myself invisible. Taking to the air I sorted through the ghosts to find a hoodoo man who had once faced Azazel in combat and survived the encounter. On his advice I lashed out with a blood chilling curse on Azazels vessel and started slashing at him with the angel blade I'd stolen.

"I gotta admit, pagan, you've earned a fair amount of respect from me!" Azazel snarled as he moved back parrying my rather poor knife fighting skills easily. "If we weren't on opposite sides of this conflict I might even have been willing to work beside you, rather than over you, but you're mine!" then he exploded in a ball of blue fire. I managed to apparate away given his rather stupid warning, but I would still be needing burn crème after this.

This time though was different, because when I landed, Azazel was there to meet me. He met me, fists charged with lighting which sizzled against my dragon hide jacket. "Wouldn't count my chicken before they hatched!" I snarl. "Fiendfyre!"

The spell hit him point blank and he was quickly consumed by a screaming hawk of brilliant yellow and green flame. But instead of pained scream or the smell of burnt meat, laughter came from within. "Hellfire!? Lucifer be, i'm freaking impressed! But you didn't really expect hellfire to harm a Lord of Hell, did you?" he asked charging me, naked, through the flames.

"No," I replied as he grabbed me by the front of my jacket "but it did get you into another devil's trap."

He looked down and around, "What devils..." the he saw the large circle dug into the ground around us by the Sasquatch, each of the channels filled with a small flow of blood "trap. Oh, my... You are a tricky little worm aren't you pagan?" He abruptly turned and tried to shove his hand into my chest, only for my form to crumble and disappear in a kaleidoscope of light.

"First rule of magical combat." I called from outside the circle. "Never take your attention off your opponent. I get the idea you're overly used to being able to completely overpower anyone you come up against."

Azazel strolled up to the edge of the devils trap, acting as if he wasn't bound to the area here and had no concerns in the world. "That may be true, but you've reminded me of more in two battles than any fight I've faced in... three millenia, give or take a few centuries." He shrugged. "Still, this blood is going to soak into the ground in a couple of hours, and now that I have our scent..." He grinned broadly. "Hell this has been fun!"

I shook my head. "Y'know, we're really not all that opposed to each other. Just give me the kids. There's plenty of other ways to skin a cat and it's a real crime to waist potential like that."

The Demon leaned on the wall of energy that sprang up from the edge of the Devils trap. "I'm curious, Potter. Why aren't you trying to stop me? I looked you up the moment I learned who it was that had been messing in my business. You're one of the hero types, a prophesied savior for your kind. Or at least those in England. It just seem... out of character."

I chuckled softly. "The seven year sabbatical didn't give you a hint?" At the demon's raised brow I shook my head. "Things were going down hill in a bad way when I was born and the prophesy didn't actually even refer to me until nearly a year and a half later. Tom was winning and nothing the order was doing was going to stop him. Dumbledore wouldn't allow his people to kill, some tripe about forgiveness, as if the crimes Tom's minions tended to commit were worthy of such. After my potions teacher betrayed my family in a fit of spite against my father and demanded my mother as payment, that's when my fate became sealed. The muggles have a saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions; Bernard Clairvaux, circa 1150. Good intentions was pretty much all Dumbledore had. When he found me that night, he condemned me to eleven years as a slave and sullied my mothers sacrifice by binding me to a home where he knew I wouldn't be like, would even be feared and probably mistreated. After that, seven years of the wizarding world being schizophrenic was about all I could take. I did the hero thing and vanquished Tom because I knew that If I didn't, he'd certainly do so to me."

I turned around an laughed. "As it turned our, we were both each others lifelines. When Tom resurrected himself he used my blood as the basis for his new body. Between his body and my scar, we coulda both been immortal and unkillable! After that, all I wanted to do was get out. The only thing tying me there is my godson and Hermione, both of whom are well taken care of. Our of your reach too, so don't be getting any bright ideas."

The devil smirked at me from behind his barrier. "Yeah, that girl of yours was the first one I went after. Always nice to have insurance when dealing with mortal worms. Teleported away the moment I tried to grab her. Pesky things you Pagans. Hard to catch, hard to track. As for your sabbatical, you killed several dark lords in the last seven years and forced half a dozen of my kind to find new host bodies."

I rolled my eyes. "They had the same problem as you," I scoffed "strike first, ask questions only after their butt's been kicked."

I watched as Azazel nodded slowly. "Territorial are we who seek power" he agreed.

"That being said, I'm not particularly keen to let you go." I said, simply. "You've attacked me twice and pretty much refuse to negotiate. Reason i'm asking for the kids? They remind me of myself. You're the big bad, you're following a prophesy about the return of your god and you're visiting these kids shortly after they're born. You kill their mothers after giving them your mark and they grow up in hell only to be brought into a world much bigger and scarier than they thought it was with strange powers and the weight of the world on their shoulders."

"Sentiment" yellow eyes scoffed. "I'm curious though, Most worms like you, I'm able to manipulate their bodies with a glance, you should have been dead a thousand times already, your soul firmly ensconced in my toy chest. Why is that?"

I smirked. "I don't know how it works with your muggle thralls who you grant wishes, but for us wizards our magic is our identity. To transfigure the body you have to overpower the targets magic and so far your attempts haven't more than tickled. I'd stick with the loud spells if I were you."

"Alright." Azazels voice said from behind me as a bolt of lightning struck me in the center of the back. I groaned heavily and looked around, trying to figure out when my prisoner had escaped. As Azazel walked up to me, his feet crunching in the dirt I saw a petite blond woman at one edge of the circle, grinning, her hands covered with dirt. "You wizards..." Azazel said as he kicked me. "You talk too much."

As he made to kick me again I rolled over and stabbed the humming silvery blade I'd taken from the angel into his leg. It lit up gold and red as if lightning was crackling under the skin and he howled, long and loud, falling to the ground. Staggering up to my knees I wrenched the dagger out and made to stab him in a much better place when I was bowled over by a flying tackle from the blond girl.

"You will not hurt my father!" she snarled, punching me, each jab breaking a rib. "That's my job!" I teleported, appearing just above her, the knife still in my hand and pointed down. Her whole body flashed with lightning and her bone structure showed through briefly before the pair of us collapsed.

"Well..." Azazel groaned, standing and staggering a little before taking to the air just a few inches above the ground "aren't you..." black energy collected around his fists charging for another attack "full of surprises."

I teleported again, but Azazel, true to his word, was a fast learner. Instead of a series of direct bolts, the lances of dark smokey light shot out in every direction spearing me and, from the sounds of the roars, a few Sasquatch who hadn't made it far enough away from the battle after they'd dug my devils trap for me. The spells he'd used was a cold so deep it burned. It wasn't quite on the level of the cruciatus, but being speared by a couple of those bolts? Merlins ball, the pain!

As Azazel floated over to me, gloating, I looked at the two different sets of blood on my hands and something I'd learned from an angry ghost while raiding his ruined temple in Mexico came back to me. Resurrection came in any number of forms, but the most common one was life for a life. Or in the case of the Aztecs, blood for blood. The rituals to do this even were quite simple. Get the blood of the dead and the sacrifice together on the same blade and then make a simple invocation to Teteoinan Coatlicue, the mother of gods, patron of priests and mistress of life and death. The invocation was simple in english, but rolling off the tongue sounded rather vulgar somehow. It translated to, Mother goddess, the vessel before me is unworthy. Grant their life to the bereaved.

As the last sylables of the invocation rolled off my lips the spectral image of a beautiful native american girl with brightly feathered wings, no shirt or bra and a skirt of live serpents clasped by a skull appeared before me grinning. Azazels heart burst from his chest and floated to the womans hand. Once there she pushed up a stone headdress of feathers and a stylized snakes head and began eating. Azazel, his vessel dead despite the demons control over it, looked stunned for a moment before his head flew back and black smoke issued out of the holes in his head. As the blond woman jerked back to life she looked around wildly, hope in her eyes, only to scream as Azazel plunged into her, taking possession.

The dark goddess of the Aztec's sneered however, and the blood of Azazel's last host swirled up to form a set of Aztec runes around the girl he'd taken possession of before slamming into her skin, and glowing brightly before settling down as a series of tattoos that covered most of the blonds body. Then the goddess turned to me. "I thank you, priest. It has been quite some time since a supplicant called on me, and to offer such a powerful sacrifice as well..." she grinned, the blood of the heart still staining her lips and teeth ""It was delicious!" She kissed me on the cheek before fading away. "Don't forget to call."

I slumped back into the dirt and groaned. Looking over at the blond that had called Azazel father and was now possessed by him I smiled wearily, satisfied at least that s/he wouldn't be getting back up any time soon. I whimpered as I pulled out a selection of curatives from an expanded pocket on the inside of my jacket. Sometimes it seemed as if my life never really changed. I gulped down the foul tasting concoctions and tried not to gag. Lightning damage was always a bitch to get over.

As the fatigue and pains of the battle began to melt away I got up and stumbled my way over to the fallen blond. I was going to have to do something about this. Allowing that angel to free Azazel last time was serious lapse and one that had come closer to killing me than anything since Voldemort that night in the forest. Fighting normal wizards was easy, teleport, vanish disarm and shame. So few of them ever learned how to do non ritual wandless magic so taking away their focus, be it a wand, staff, dagger or enchanted object, pretty much put them totally at their opponents mercy. Most of my true fighting since seventh year had been against magical creatures that would rather take a bite out of me than talk. And a few who wanted to do both, though those usually turned out to be more... enjoyable rather than bloody. Sometimes. This guy however, Morgana's bane... his wandless magic put everything I'd picked up over seven years of being exposed to every other form of magic and endless lessons by famous ghosts to shame! Absolute shame!

I shook my head and began levitating the woman. Once we were back in my car I laid her down on the floor and set up another demons trap, this time built into the floor and ceiling, once with Iron, the other with Silver and layered atop them two more, a blood based repetition on the Iron trap and a salt film on the silver one in the ceiling. Blood, silver, iron and salt, four of the seven most powerful binding elements in magic and four separate Seals of Solomon. Shaking my head I began layering hex wards around the outside of the seals, just for good measure. Bludgeoning, bone breaking, skin flaying, a rather nasty Chinese soul curse and a voodoo spell from a priest of Baron Samedi for flavor. I contemplated adding a few jinxes to it to add insult to injury, but decided against it. Finally I conjured a Patronus and set it to circling the cage just for good measure. The Holy Protector probably wouldn't do a whole lot to stop angels, but it should be able to ruin any demon or dark creatures day and given the winged assholes pause for thought.

"There is no such thing as overkill, only is it dead and pass the pepper-up potion." I muttered darkly. Pity my car isn't able to handle siege wards or the Fidelious, both of those require a stable location and access to local ley lines, the second of which is hard to get when you're flying through the air unless you're right in the center of one. With that, I moved to a panel, pulled out my brilliantly comfortable foam bed and went to sleep.

~! #$%^&*()_+

The next morning was odd. Instead of a stalking, glaring screaming Azazel, the blond woman he had possessed sat in the circle, chin on one knee, arms wrapped around the upright leg and crying softly. She looked like shit and it was so utterly out of character for Azazel I lowered the silencing charm to talk. Her eyes were still the same glowing yellow as Azazels, but the expression and cold humor i'd come to assiciate witht hem in the short time I'd known the monster were completely absent.

"Azazel?" I asked, and the girl flinched.

"He's here," she croaked out, her voice still scratchy from what had apparently been hours of crying "Who are yo... oh. He's very mad at you, Harry Potter." she was silent for a while as I crouched there stunned. "Good. She said eventually."

"So, ah, if you don't mind, who are you? You're not the screaming girl from last night, and you don't seem to be Azazel, because he's not that good an actor, so..."

"Meg." she rasped, smiling slighly, more tears forming at the sides of her eyes. "I'm Megara Masters. I'd shake your hand, but..."

I nodded. "Demon trap."

Her slight smile turned to a grimace. "I woke up a few hours ago." She explained softly. "I was possessed last year, just a couple months ago really. My parents think I ran away from college and my twin's been going crazy. The woman who was possesing me, her name was Anita. She was a witch" she paused shortly at my scowl before continuing "back in the fifteen hundreds. Sold herself to Azazel for the power to get revenge on her husband, a local lord who'd been cheating on her with half the town. She was later burnt at the stake and spent a century under the knife of Hell's master torturer before Azazel freed her and made her his apprentice."

"First thing's first." I replied, conjuring a glass of water and summoning a bagel from the fridge across the car "the person who possesed you? She was not a witch. Witches and Wizards don't need angels or demons to give us power, we're born with it." I floated the water and bagel over to her and she greedily wolfed them down. When she was done she looked back at me, uncertainty in her eyes and her voice still scratchy from the tears, but no longer a rasp.

"T-then... why were witches burnt at the stake? How did Anita get her powers to begin with?"

I shrugged. "Normal people can gain power from dealing with spirits, that much is true." I said nodding. "some theories go that's how we became wizards in the first place, but the history of magic is nearly fifteen thousand years old, probably older, whilst Enochian history," Confusion showed in her eyes so I clarified "Christian, Islamic and Jewish history, are only seven thousand years old. What ever happened with the angels occurred before they and Elohim, their god creature, came to earth. Pretty near every religion you'll find claims to have invented the world and everything else in it, but in the end, each of them found this place and the older the religion and set of gods you talk to, the more you can find when the others showed up."

"Now, what about Azazel?" I asked, sitting down outside the wards with my own food and drink. "You said you could hear him, but that he wasn't in control?"

She nodded. "He tries, but whenever I feel like I'm loosing control, this red snake blots out my vision in a flash. I feel tired and he's in pain somewhere in the back of my head. I can hear him too, like the voice in your head when you're staring off into space and thinking about things, but it's cold and oily so its easy to tell the difference."

I nodded. It made sense, but I wasn't really willing to trust her just yet.

"Well, if you can hear him, but aren't then you know I'm on vacation. You also know I can't afford to let you out of that cage, so aside from that, if there's anything I can do to make you more comfortable, just let me know."

She nodded, looking depressed. "When the first demon, Anita, took me, she cut my hair, dyed it and made me dress like a slut. Some better cloths would be a good start."

I grinned slightly. "Well, that we can do something about." Taking out my wand I summoned a swirl of dirt from around the car and transfigured it into a brush. With a few words it was enchanted and floating over to her. "Useful little trick I picked up on my way through France a couple of years ago." I explained. "Run it through your hair and think of the color you want. Anything under the bristles will change, all the way down to your roots, and the hair will start growing as you brush. No more than an inch or so a stroke, but then it was meant for hair styling, so it probably wouldn't have done well if it was more than that."

She took the implement and stared at it in wonder. "You can really do all of this with magic? The spells Anita knew... well, there were a lot, but they always cost something, and were always broad strokes and actions." I nodded and we spent a few minutes talking cloths. It turned out she liked button down shirts, loose jeans and leather jackets. Her twin was the girly one and it was one of the things they often tried to do to differentiate each other to the public. Aside from that, it felt more comfortable to her than Anita's tight cloths and short skirts and plunging necklines. I nodded, thankful not to need to listen to some girly girl talking about specific fashions and cuts, something I probably would have reapplied the silencing charm for, and let her change as I went back to the bridge.

The massively extended inside of the sports car was, as I said, designed to look like the bridge of one of those muggle scifi spaceships. Among the other many enchantments available were inertial dampeners, which I usually turned off because I liked to feel the motion of whatever I was flying. As we traveled further north I set up a screen in front of Meg so she could watch as I toured the rest of Canada and Alaska. I'd lost much of my interest in traveling though. I was still eager to see Australia and Hawaii, but more interesting was Meg and her demon problem. It took a few weeks for her and I to determine Azazel was really locked up and well caged and we'd begun working on allowing her to get accustomed to working with the Demon's powers.

We'd tried doing the whole Taoist thing to allow her access to Azaels memories as well, but most of them were horrifying to Meg in the extreme and we ended up dropping that avenue of research. It would take her a lot of time and practice to be able to dig through the demons mind with any sort of direction and we were both rather nervous of what doing that might end up meaning. Who we are is made heavily by our memories and if Meg absorbed too many of Azazels... It didn't really bear contemplating. I eventually let her out of the Demon traps as well, though I set a modified one drawn from the Eldar Futhark to hover around her invisible just in case.

Meg's powers, as we determined, were not quite 25% of Azazels for the same the same amount of effort, the reason for which were the native tattoos that kept the demon bound. They fed off the demons own power as a means of keeping him in check which took about half of yellow eyes capacity whilst the rest was strained through another set of tattoos in a matter similar to the shonin jump manga Hisako had introduced me to. Naru something or other. Hisa-chan had been furious when she'd seen it on the shelves and take time to explain how insulting and ludicrous it was that any human could trap one of her people like that and siphon their power. Regardless, this was what was happening inside Meg, the half of the power that was being drained off of Azazel was being purified and fed into the host, her, allowing the quarter that was left to be used by her.

Of all the powers Azazel's imprisonment granted her, Meg's favorite was flight. Ah... a girl after my own heart. The pair of us ended up back in America at some point and started stories about superheroes being real when we ran afoul of some bank robbers escaping in their helicopter. The raid on the chopper actually caused an amusing bit of controversy on the news because aside from taking the thing down and tying up the robbers for the Swatt team on the adjacent building, we took half of the money with us.

We were setting up a trust account for the money in Saginaw Michigan when Meg got a headache. One of Azazels memories surfaced as we saw this kid walk by. He was eighteen, rail thin and rather dirty. He had this hunched, beaten look about him and Meg and the kid were staring at each other.

"Meg?" I asked. "What is it? You recognize him? Demon? Or someone Azazel screwed over?"

She shook her head. "No, this is one of the kids he fed his blo-ah! His blood too!" she staggered, holding her head in pain as the tattoos flashed brightly several times. "The kid's developed his powers, ah! A-azazel... he kil-killed the boys mother! Oh god! There's fire everywhere, he's got her pinned to the ceiling!" she whispered heaving. "He's cut open her belly and set the room on fire, and another baby fell out! Oh god, oh god, oh god..." I held her gently as he heaved, vomiting on the sidewalk outside the bank. Well, shit. Certainly a candidate for extraction. I checked my phone. February 6th 2006. Hmm... snatch the kid and explain things later? Or do the Xavier thing... Oop, no, not gonna get the chance here he comes.

"Are, are you alright?" the kid asks. Now that he's closer I can see the dark shadow over one eye that indicates a bruise. He's been in some sort of fight recently. Potentially when his power's awakened.

I tilted my head tot he side slightly. "Alright is a point of contention right now. What's your name, kid?"

Said 'kid' scowled at the address. "Max" he said quietly.

I tried to put on my best friendly smile without looking forced or patronizing. "Well, Max. My friend and I are... I guess you might call us superheroes." I replied, showing him an handful of flame. He jerked back and then stared at it like a thirsty man in a desert. "Among other powers, my friend here, Meg, can sense other supers. It doesn't happen often, but given her particularly strong reaction to your powers, I'd say you have quiet a bit to grow into. Mind telling me what you've done so far?"

He nodded eagerly and levitated a couple of rocks. "I thought I was alone..." he said breathlessly.

I shrugged. "Naw, there's a whole big bad world out there. This is just your first step. Wanna come along for the ride? Hate to sound all Disney's Aladdin here, but me and Meg, we can show you a whole new world." I snapped my fingers and the car dropped it's muggle aversion charm, allowing him to see it as if if faded into reality. The thing chirped and opened the doors too, which I hadn't told it to do, but then it was about time all the magic permeating the damn thing started to form a personality. By this time Meg had recovered too and was trying to smile through the headache Azazel's little tantrum had given her.

Max looked somewhat hesitant though. "I have something I need to do first" he said. "And I'm twenty three, so if I come, I don't want you calling me kid."

Shrugging I took a quick peek in the boys mind and swore. Max planned to kill his dad, uncle and stepmother. It hadn't happened yet, but the first attack was going to happen tonight when his father got home. Carbon dioxide poisoning, apparent suicide. I'd call it a murder, except that the associative memories involving the man were pretty much entirely of beatings. Thousands of them, going back 22 years. Many of them including Max's uncle and all after the age of six with his stepmother looking on passively as if she couldn't see what was happening. Hell, it almost made me happy for the Dursleys screaming, ritual starvation and general malign neglect.

What a chilling though.

"You know..." I drawled, off hand. "If you kill them, they won't suffer for it. Not nearly as much as if you had a real revenge." The boy reeled and Meg looked up in shock. Seeing that I had both of their attention I continued. "Abusive relatives." I said softly, "I know the feeling. Know what worked for me? Living well. Come on in, I wanna show you something."

I climbed into the expanded interior of my car and waited for the pair of them to follow. Meg did pretty quickly, but it took Max a little while. "It, it's bigger..."

"On the inside than out? I know, great isn't it?"

"A-are you The Doctor?" I looked at him strangely. "Doctor Who?" he asked again. "You know, Galifray? TARDIS? Time travel?"

I shook my head bemused. "Time travel is a highly controlled branch of magic." I replied.

"You didn't say you were unable." Max countered looking excited.

"Best I can do is a couple of weeks and I have to sit on a ley nexus to power it." I replied. "Very illegal. As to the other things you mentioned... I'm gonna give a big huh?"

Max shook his head. "British TV show called Doctor Who. It spoke of an alien called a Time Lord from the planet Galifray. He was usually a britt and he liked to run around time with an entourage of normal humans while he solved problems."

I nodded slowly. "I... think Hermione might have mentioned it once. It sounds vaguely familiar. Now, about you killing your family, and I use that term loosely."

Max looked away. "When I first got my powers, about six months ago, I thought I had been given a gift. The headaches were awful, but the promise of what I could do held me through. Then, four days ago, after coming back from work, my dad got drunk again. He beat the living hell out of me and all of my power, all of my training... it meant nothing. I was just that scared little kid again, wanting desperately for the beatings to end, one way or another. It was then that I realized I had to kill them. That it would never be over until either they were gone or I was."

"And you couldn't just run away," I added nodding "because it's not about getting away anymore, it's about not being scared."

"What do you know?" Max asked, looking up, his expression a pale mess of frustration, fear and hopeful.

"Because I've been there before." I replied. "My relatives never beat me; well my cousin did, but my uncle would scream a lot and throw me headfirst into a cupboard which he would lock for a week at a time. Maybe he was drunk, maybe he'd had a bad day at work, maybe I'd used my powers in public, or maybe I'd just done better than his useless whale of a son. It never mattered."

Max nodded, understanding. "What did they blame you for? For my dad it was all of that, but trade doing better at anything for the death of my mom. He used to get drunk and ramble on about it. How he came into my nursery and saw her pinned to the ceiling, her stomach slashed open and fire pouring off of her."

Meg whimpered and Max gave her an odd look.

"You're not the only one that particular scene has happened to." I said darkly. "Don't worry too much though," I offered trying to calm Max's sudden horrified disbelief "the man who did it is currently locked up in a deep dark hole even he'll never figure out how to get out of. I saw to that personally."

We talked for several more hours and eventually the three of us got onto the subject of what could be done with Telekinesis and more creative ways to punish Max's parents rather than killing them. We'd settled on playing poltergeist and getting the three of them committed to mental institutions when Sam and Dean showed up in town. Sam had been having recurring headaches and visions of the various things we'd been planning to do to the Millers along with my own battles with Yellow Eyes. They caught up with us, all three of them, as we were heading back to the millers house.

With a sniper rifle.

Thankfully John Winchester either isn't a very good shot or was aiming for my heart and managed to hit me in-between the shoulders on my dragon leather jacket. The impact of the bullet against my spine caused my shoulders and back to pop as I was personally thrown face first into the Millers rose bushes. The report of the rifle however allowed Meg and Max to put up telekinetic shields to war off five further shots. I've got a nasty pair of bruises and a face full of scratches which I'm already healing with my wand and my two charges are only slightly shaken. Max in particular is holding up well. Given what he said earlier about not being afraid I think this little battle might actually end up being fortuitous.

Another pair of bullets thunder in to stop inches from mine and Meg's foreheads. Alright, so the guy's not that back a shot.

"I get the feeling you're used to this." Meg asked me weakly.

I shake my head. "Not as such, no, though with all of the trouble I've caused in the last decade I have found myself chased by armed peacekeepers on both sides of the magical divide on one occasion or another. Dragon leather is a life saver. Truly."

"Heh." Max managed. "S-so long as you don't do this regularly I guess..."

I look at him and grin, as two more bullets are caught, one coming for the boys heart and another for mine. "Regular? Not really. I don't even go looking for trouble, it just seems to find me." I shrugged. "The curse of being interesting I suppose, normal just doesn't do you anymore."

By this point the bullets stopped coming and the sound of far off police sirens were beginning to wail. I watched as in the distance, in the general direction of the shots, finally seeing our attackers as they drove off in a ford 4 by 4 followed by a Chevrolet Impala. I fired off a series of tracking charms and grinned as one finally caught, a small stream of information blossoming in my mind. The I couldn't tell from the distance but the two boys looked angry about something. I wonder whether it was our continued survival or their dad's shooting at us without any sort of confrontation. Dean seemed like the type who liked to face off against his opponents nose to nose and fisticuffs. Sam... I'm not sure, aside from that he seemed protective of his brother back in the tent.

I turned back to the pair. "Still wanna go deal with your family? We may not end up having the time needed for a proper revenge."

Max's features took on a less certain cast, but he nodded. "If it comes to that we can fall back on the original plan." He said, his voice thick. I sighed. This kid was going to be a lot of work, I was sure of it.

~! #$%^&*()_+

The 'plan' ended up going off without a hitch, though that probably had a lot to do with the muggle aversion ward I put on the front door. The three of us walked around the house under notice-me-not charms, Max and Meg showing off to each other as they moved things around the room, subtly at first to make his dad and stepmother thing they were crazy. Things ramped up when I conjured a brief illusion of Jim's dead wife in a white dress to haunt him. Mr. Miller it seemed was a very superstitious man and believed that he was being haunted by his wife quite easily.

When Max's uncle Roger came rushing into the house on his brothers frantic call, I pulled up the illusion again and nodded to Max, allowing him to say whatever he wanted to the exceedingly frightened trio whilst I kept watch for the Department of Magic pigeons. Magicals in America didn't use Owls much because they were so obvious and easy to spot. Pigeons though were absolutely ubiquitous and responded well to the charms used to upgrade Owls for mail service. They weren't quite as fast as owls, but they were much less suspiciously out of place and the mail was always delivered to the right place.

In the end, the kid doesn't get to kill his family, they do it themselves out of guilt and the belief that Sally was going to stick around and continue to punish them for as long as they punished Max for an event that hadn't even been his fault.

It was probably better that they did it rather than the kid. He had been able to get everything off his chest, face his family without being scared and just let everything bleed. And in the end, his father and step mother did themselves in out of guilt, proving to him that he wasn't the bad one. Jim Miller had done it with a gun he kept in the car, Alice with some pills she was already using to deal with some sort of stress. Roger Miller, the uncle didn't commit suicide, he just ran. We followed him and watched as he drank himself into a coma and fell asleep in a ditch where he was robbed by some random homeless bum whilst laying in his own vomit. His keys, his wallet, his phone. I might have helped a bit, but Roger Miller, child abuser, would not be going home any time soon. Not exactly How I'd hoped everything would go, only one of them was ever going to really suffer for it before they died, but considering they were christian and what supposedly happened in their hell... well.

~! #$%^&*()_+

That night I visited the Winchester trio at their hotel.

Alone.

Max was sleeping off the stress of the day in a new room I'd had the car grow to accommodate him and Meg was calling her sister who we planned to visit soon.

I apparated into the right seat of John Winchester's truck, which was sadly empty of the man, and looked around. There was a demon trap in the ceiling of the cab above me and a number of enchanted items on the dashboard. I picked one up and examined it. It was a small idol, made of wood and covered in stained runes. Blood magic. Casting a few spells I determined that it was supposed to light up when in the vicinity of Orge's. Useful no doubt. Pity such magic is deemed dark in most of the world. I picked up another. This one was a small pouch with small cylindrical objects inside and what smelled like thyme and cannabis. A hoodoo pouch of some sort. Shrugging I opened it up and found that the small cylinders were bones. Toe and finger if I didn't miss my guess, from a young teen.

Rolling one of the bones between my fingers I focused on my connection to the misbegotten Hallows and pulled. It wasn't hard, traumatized children were always ready to lash out. The victim of this hoodoo pouch had belonged to a young boy, a twin whose brother was sick with a wasting disease. The parents for some reason hadn't killed the other brother but used the child who was part of this pouch as a source of materials to keep the other one alive. It had started out as simple blood and hair, but as the parents got further and further into the sacrificial magics of the islands it moved on to strips of skin, bits of organs and finally bones. The boy's spirit had been bound to the bag with instructions to heal and regenerate anyone who wore it. John had killed the parents who made it, but kept the pouch, either because he was an asshole or because he simply didn't understand what he had I wasn't sure. Since the kid didn't know either I let it go.

A quick question about whether or not the kid wanted to move on saw me burning the bag and calling the reapers. At first, the one who showed up was mad that I'd had the audacity to do so, using the power of the stone and my familiarity with two of their number to dare summon them. Then he saw the kid and we got to explaining things. He still wasn't happy, but he took the kid, promising me he'd be going to one of the better afterlives for his life of self-sacrifice and giving me a more polite way to get in contact with the death-gods.

The three Winchesters were in room 111 when I knocked on the door calling out "Pizza for Winchester!" Dean was sitting on one of the double beds, a gun kit spread out with the barrel of a sawed off dismantled in his hands and 3 of 4 other guns spread out on cloths around him. John Winchester was sitting in an overstuffed chair in the corner and it was Sam who had come to the door to open if for me.

"Wow, that was fas... SHIT!"

As soon as the door was open and he saw me, I hit him with a simple bodybind jinx and made Dean magnetic with another. All of the guns and their parts flew towards him and got stuck on his skin where he struggled to pull them off. John, who had lost his own guns and a knife to his son, pulled out another Hoodoo bag and began chanting at me. I rolled my eyes and hit him with a levitation and disarming charm.

"So!" I said cheerily, clapping my hands together once. "I thought we could talk..." I said, stepping over Sam. "You're going to tell me why I shouldn't kill the three of you." I nodded to Dean and added. "Again in your case."

Dean swore and John Winchester made threats, but it was Sam's response that caught my attention. "Because you're one of the good guys" he said from where he lay on the floor, stiff as a board. The statement caught all three of us by surprise. The boy wasn't done though, now that he had everyone quieted and listening he spoke again. "You killed Dean without hesitation the first time we met, and for that I hate you, but you only did so after he shot you. You gave us chances to walk away. Then I saw what you did with those people in the tent and talked to the pastor afterwords. He explained what his wife was doing. You don't take lives in order to heal like he was doing with the reaper, you just did it. I also saw your battle with the yellow eyed demon, the one dad says killed mom and Jess..."

"And now he's tagging along with it!" John interrupted, snarling and turning to me. "You should have killed the son of a bitch, not let it possess a girl or keep it around!"

I hit the man with a minor coughing jinx and turned back to Sam, canceling the body bind and helping him up. "You know, you're a bright boy Sam. Must have gotten that from your mother, because it certainly didn't come from the guy i'm holding to the ceiling..." I say pointedly looking over my shoulder at the boy's father. Turning back to Sam I nod towards the bed second bed where Dean was still struggling with the metal clinging to his body and each other. "Take a seat."

Speaking of the devil... "You going to let me out of this?" Dean snapped as Sam sat down. "You're obviously not going to kill us or you'd have done it already!"

I offer the older brother a raised brow. "Are you going to shoot me again? Because I'll quite happily kill you for trying. Especially now I know Elohim's feather dusters will just haul your ass back." I pause at his scowl, putting a thoughtful finger to my lips as I've seen Hermione do on occasion. "Although..." I grin "that might not actually be that bad a strategy! I mean, I've already got the steward of hell on a leash, why not add an angel? What do you think Dean? Wanna see how long it takes them to bring your ass back this time?"

Dean stops struggling and just glares at me. Shrugging I cancel the jinx. When he doesn't make any moves to try to reassemble his guns or gab a piece to attack me with I smile and turn back to the still coughing John Winchester.

"Ah, sorry..." I cancel that jinx too. "You were saying chuckles?"

"Why didn't the hoodoo bag stop you?"

I stared at him. "Really?" I asked after a few seconds. "You're going to lead with that?"

"I took that bag off one of the strongest hoodoo men in the northern hemisphere. The guy had a reputation for surviving deals with demons and I watched him take down a pack of hell hounds. He swore the thing would protect me from witches and it's worked pretty damn well so far."

I rolled my eyes. No harm in answering him really, the witches muggle hunters deal with are the Enochian wiccans, not my type. "Because my powers don't come from a demon, you idiot. A hoodoo bag to stop wicca from calling on their demon patrons for power isn't going to stop a wizard who's had his powers since birth. Now how about a reason I shouldn't kill you in front of your boys for shooting at me and my friends earlier?"

"Because if my son is right about you, then you care about people." The old man said. "That means you want me alive, because I'm they guy who hunts the things that go bump in the night. Every monster I kill saves hundreds of human lives. Innocent lives more often than not."

I shrugged noncommittally. It wasn't a bad argument from a certain perspective. It still assumed a higher importance on his own life than mine though which, while reasonable from a personal perspective, didn't exactly do wonders to convince me to let him go. "And that Justifies you shooting at me, Meg and especially Max... how exactly?" I ask, manipulating the levitation charm with my wand so that he was face to face with me, but upside down with his hands locked to his sides.

"You're traveling with the demon who killed my wife and one of the kids he corrupted fir one. Either of those makes you guilty. You know what sort of monster the yellow eyes is, Sam said you fought him! Why keep him alive? Why travel with him? Why sacrifice some innocent girl to be his host?" He huffed, sentences becoming shorter as he began to have trouble with the blood rushing to his head. "For another... a person... with powers like yours,... obtained at or before birth? My research has told me about things like you... Cambion."

"Aestus Fulgar." I snapped, lightning springing out from my wand and hitting him like a taser for few seconds before stopping. "My mum was about as far from a demon as you can get you stupid little bugger" I said coldly.

"If you're not... a cambion... then what... are you?" he asked, breathing heavily, his face purple. Damn. I was going to need to turn him upright soon or he'd likely pass out.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are drempt of in your philosophy."

"Shakespeare..." he huffed "i get it already... I don't know what you are... I shouldn't have attacked... without doing research..."

I turned to the Winchester brothers. "Is he usually this dense?" Not waiting for their replies, but noting Dean's outraged expression and Sam's slight smile, I turned back to the now nearly purple John Winchester. "You shouldn't have attacked at all. Your only information came from your son having a vision, a skill which is notoriously unreliable, and indicated, if anything, that I was a hunter like you who'd just trapped a high level demon. Did it not perhaps occur to you that, oh I don't know, killing Meg might let it escape? Or that killing me was obviously wrong in the first place?"

When John didn't answer I took a close look at the man and swore, turning him right side up. "He's passed out, damn-it. What am I gona do now? Not exactly the type to shoot someone in their sleep..."

"You could let us go." Dean offered gruffly. I gave him an incredulous look and he held up his hands, standing slowly. "No, no, hear me out. Attacking first was wrong, we get that. Research the weirdness, then make the call. We tried to kill you twice, you killed me once, how bout we just call it even? We'll keep an eye on pops and not attack you again less you do somethin stupid. Like eating people."

I glare at the pair of them for nearly a minute before nodding. Turning back tot heir father I perform a few medical charms, explaining what I'm doing to the agitated brothers, and after making sure their father was alright I added a number of hexes on the side. John Winchester would not be unable to talk about me or risk belching uncontrollably every time he opened his mouth, looking at me for more than a few seconds would cause him to fart loud and rank and actually trying to shoot me could cause him to void his bowels. One of Ginny's favorite curses after the bat bogey, though the triggers are often different on account of her not having to get used to being shot at. I talked to one of her victims once and the effect is apparently rather painful. Not dangerously so, but akin to full abdominal cramps.

With that done, I left. "Take care you two." I snarked. "Places to go, people to mess with, you know drill..."

~! #$%^&*()_+

Authors note.

Well, that's all for this chapter folks. Review if you have any question, review if you enjoyed it, or hell if you're really annoying just review to flame me for how much I'm abusing your favorite fandom. Either of them. Current outline has only 3 more chapters till this is finished, so don't expect an epic.

OH! and before I forget, I'll happily take reviews or PM's with Beta worthy edits, because I know my searching has missed...something... It always does.