Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke (or whosoever is in charge now). I might sort of-ish own this particular arrangement of words. Hurray.

This chapter gave me a ton of trouble, hence the delay. The long and short of it is that I was plagued with a deadly combination of writer's block, real life, and an ongoing struggle with awkward phrasing. I kept rewriting it again and again. And then it had to be beta-ed. Then I rewrote the first part. The new portion had to be beta-ed. Etc. Etc. Very exasperating business... but, hey, it's history now! (Thank goodness)

Thanks to SomniumAstrum and Kurama's Foxy Rose for their invaluable beta work, especially for condemning the crappiness of the first draft. You're awesome! And thank you also to my reviewers: goodnight-lock and Sailor Pandabear.

BOOK ONE

Hunter by Definition

Chapter II

A moment of utter silence came and went.

"Stupefy!" Harry exclaimed, quickly snatching his wand from the back of his trousers and pointing it at the man. Hand halfway to his holstered revolver, the man froze. Harry stopped short in sheer surprise. Could he have finally...

"What's that supposed to mean?" Victor asked witheringly, without a trace of the fear his trembling hands suggested. He scrabbled in his shirt pocket and lit a cigarette. "Abracadabra, you turn me into a frog. How bloody awful."

The wand in Harry's fist suddenly felt foolish and cumbersome. "What's a hunter?" he countered.

Victor exhaled a cloud of foul-smelling smoke, and it crept up the breeze into Harry's face.

"I wish you wouldn't shove that thing in my face," Victor said irritably. He tapped the end of the cigarette with his pinky. "You're lucky I'm not one of those 'shoot first, ask questions later' sort of chaps. Put it away, will you?"

"It is a very dangerous weapon," Harry warned, relieved to find himself with some control over the situation. He stood a bit straighter.

"That you clearly don't know how to use well. Who the hell are you, anyway?"

For a moment they stood, gauging each other's appearance with narrowed eye. Harry saw a gaunt, youngish man, who carried a gun and a knife, yes – a flash of silver from his belt betrayed the last – but who looked too much like a druggie to be all that threatening. Besides, for all his snappishness, he had an air of candor.

"Ronald," Harry said finally, lowering his wand an inch or two but not entirely lowering his guard. "Ronald Weasley."

"I suppose you're the black sheep of the family," Victor replied, with a nasty note in his voice. He took another drag from his cigarette, which had visibly shortened. "Listen here, Ronald Weasley. I'm going. Leave it at that, and you'll be all right."

Somehow the self-professed hunter had maneuvered himself so that he held the trump card. The warm summer air seemed to drop several degrees.

"Will I?" Harry asked, his voice catching.

"Quite. Goodbye, Weasley." Victor picked up his bag, his arms loose and relaxed. Harry, on the other hand, felt trapped, but he couldn't let him leave without asking one more question.

"What if it comes back? The poltergeist?"

"I banished it and purified the house. You won't have trouble," Victor told him, acting for all the world like a reassuring parent. He dropped his used cigarette and ground it under his heel. "But for emergencies, I'll give you this."

"This" was a square of paper with a phone number written on it in crooked, loopy letters. Harry held it gingerly between his thumb and his index finger and looked Victor straight in the eye.

"You just threatened me," he said slowly, "and now you're all magnanimous. 'Here's a number, call if you're in trouble.' What am I supposed to think?"

Victor stared at him for nearly a minute without blinking, and then he unexpectedly grinned.

"Think what you like," he returned, snatching another cigarette from his pocket deftly and popping it between his lips. "You're the one with the very dangerous weapon."

Thankfully, Victor didn't come back – Harry gave him no reason to carry out his threat – and neither did the poltergeist. Unfortunately, that meant nothing broke the monotony of July and August, not even the day that was a birthday only in name. Hermione did write him faithfully once a week, but Margaret bemoaned Rosier's luck and her vile duties before lapsing into a nine week long silence.

"Hullo, Harry. Guess what?" Ron had scribbled on a scrap of homework scroll. He didn't have a proper notion of how to write evenly, so globs of ink blotted out a quarter of the words while the other seventy-five percent was thin and faded. He had clearly been in a hurry. "Dad's finished his project on one of your Muggle contraptions called..." There was a dark smudge and he continued, "cars. It can fly! He's taking us boys on a ride now, so I've got to dash. Hope you're doing fine. Yours truly, Ron."

Harry answered quickly and just as messily – his quill was worn at the end and ballpoint pens didn't write well on parchment – but it ended up being for nothing as Errol, the Weasleys' feeble old owl, was far too exhausted to do more than collapse on his bed. Harry stared at the bundle of feathers and resisted the urge to kick something.

Rosier's letter was so brief it looked almost like a telegram. "Having a ripping time. Warm and sunny. Not drowning either. How are the pots?"

He really had very little tact. Harry again felt the urge to kick something. Instead, he stalked outside moodily and sat on the front step twirling his wand. It made Dudley nervous. He had five minutes of sweet, sweet power before Petunia noticed and screeched for him to wash the vegetables.

The supply list from Hogwarts arrived on the dot by snowy white owl. Harry ripped the envelope in his excitement and drank in the long-awaited words.

"Second year students will require:

The Standard Book of Spells, Grade II by Miranda Goshawk

Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart

Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Holiday with H..."

He stopped there. A quick scan showed that the faceless Lockhart's alliterative trend continued. Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, and the list went on with equally hideous titles.

"You must be joking," Ron said, when they met in Flourish and Blotts that week. His skin was just healing from the summer sun, and dense, dark freckles sprinkled his face. "You've never heard of Gilderoy Lockhart? Well, you've got all the bloody luck."

"You don't like him," was Harry's astute observation.

"Of course I don't like him. He's a prat."

"He does seem a bit vain," said Harry, who had opened one of the assigned books only to see a blindingly white flash of teeth and carefully coifed curls. He shut it hastily.

"That's one way to put it. Mum and Ginny adore him, but I hope Hermione has the sense not..."

"I see you've started collecting your books," Hermione exclaimed, unexpectedly popping up over their shoulders. Ron jumped, and then he scowled and shifted away. His eyes had lit up, though, and Hermione took no offense. "I was so excited when I saw the list for this year! You know we're to be taught by Gilderoy Lockhart himself?"

"You say it like it's a good thing."

Harry brightened at the new voice. "Margaret!"

The quintessential Slytherin, Margaret didn't pop up anywhere; she manifested coolly at the end of the aisle, with every strand of hair precisely in place and without a crease in her dark blue robes. Harry, who was decidedly not the quintessential Slytherin, beamed and rushed over to greet her.

"How are you? How's Rosier?" he asked. As distant relatives, the Rosiers and Lestranges mingled often, so his two friends saw each other much more frequently than they did him.

Margaret's face soured, and she pursed her lips tightly. "We're not speaking for now," she said. "There have been issues between our families. It's all nasty business that I don't think you'll want to hear about, but no matter. It'll straighten out like it always does."

"Rosier doesn't usually care about that sort of thing."

"Well, I'm not him, am I?" Margaret replied shortly. "Afternoon, Weasley."

Ron had joined them, hovering at Harry's shoulder and watching Margaret with some caution. His hair looked particularly orange under the dusty bookshop lamps, like a great, bright warning sign. He inclined his head towards her. "Lestrange."

"Granger."

"Hullo," said Hermione, also with caution. They stood in awkward silence for nearly half a minute, with an invisible but glaringly obvious barrier between them. Their civility was purely for Harry's sake, and he knew it.

"Oh, are you playing that statue game? Count me in." Rosier's face cracked into a grin, and he waved a stack of Lockhart's books at them hilariously as he strolled over. His face was sunburned, especially his nose and prominent cheekbones, and he'd hit his (rather late) growth spurt. Now he towered even over the lanky, big-boned Ron. "Hey, Harry. Hullo, Ron, Hermione. Margaret."

He sent her a humorous, sidelong glance, which she ignored, and he patted Ron on the back in passing. Ron said nothing, and looked conflicted.

"I'm not going to ask how Greece was," Harry told him. "But I am glad to see you."

"I get the feeling that someone here doesn't share your sentiments." Rosier eyed Margaret again with mock subtlety. Turning away, she began to flip through The Standard Book of Spells, Grade II. "Don't you think you're being a bit old-fashioned, Marge?"

"Tell him," Margaret said to Harry, "that I would appreciate some peace and quiet, and that my name is not Marge."

Rosier looked as though he wanted to roll his eyes but considered himself too dignified for such behavior.

"I'd better go," said Ron, looking between them uneasily. "Mum wanted me to meet her outside once I was done so that we could get another cauldron. Gin's starting this year, you know."

"Right. I'll see you, then."

Ron nodded his agreement and took off, dragging Hermione behind him.

"I can't wait for the term to start!" she called, twisting around to wave. "Goodbye until Hogwarts!"

Harry waved back. Behind him, Margaret stood, stubbornly mute, and Rosier watched her with equal parts annoyance and regret. Ron and Hermione's departure didn't seem to have eased the tension. Harry cleared his throat.

"Did you ever find out why we left so early last year?"

"I did," said Rosier, rousing himself from his thoughts. "You know that Longbottom chap? The first year from Gryffindor? Well, it turns out he's dead."

"Dead?" Harry echoed in dazed horror, feeling rather like someone had punched him in the stomach. "He's dead? Neville Longbottom?"

"That's right. Awful stuff, too. Pomfrey found him with his throat slit, blood everywhere, but it's all been hushed up by the board. Murders are bad for business."

"Who would do that?"

D'nt wanna help with th'plan. Neville had been weeping, terrified and in pain. Pl'se? Lemme 'lone. And Harry had left him alone. Inwardly, he cursed himself.

"I really don't know. I mean, he was a little git, but he didn't deserve that. Dumbledore is setting up more wards. My dad said he's been trying to get help from professionals. But I tell you, I'm not going anywhere inside Hogwarts without a wand in my hand and a curse on my tongue."

Harry swallowed and pushed back a hot, heavy clump of hair from his forehead. The words seemed to have sucked all the air out of his lungs. It couldn't merely be a coincidence that Neville had known some demonic plan, and that now he was dead.

"Stop there," Rosier said, eyes and voice sharp. Harry stopped mid-motion, wildly wondering for a split second if he had heard his thoughts. But Rosier was staring at his forehead.

"What is it? Is there something on my face?"

Rosier peered closer and frowned. "More like there isn't. Your scar is disappearing," he said, sounding perplexed. "It's almost gone."

Harry felt for the familiar puckered scar tissue. "That's ridiculous. What are you talking about?"

"No, honestly. Look at yourself in a mirror. It was light enough last year, but I thought that was because your biographies liked to exaggerate. It's definitely faded since then."

"That's natural, though, isn't it?" Harry asked, still probing his forehead. The scar did feel less pronounced than before, but the change had been too gradual for him to notice. "Scars go away over time."

"This isn't a normal scar, Harry. The Killing Curse runs by a completely different set of rules."

"It's not like it managed to kill me, either," Harry said, but the joke fell flat. Once more, he rubbed at the almost nonexistent scar and yanked his hair down over it. "Anyway, what do you know about the effects of the Killing Curse, besides it killing people?"

"Don't be melodramatic, Rosier," Margaret snapped, breaking her self-imposed silence. "You're making a big deal out of nothing. Harry's fine, and if the scar's going away, then all the better. Really, sometimes you can be the silliest pair of goons I've ever met."

"I'm not melodramatic," said Rosier, indignantly. "Just concerned."

"You're an overgrown monkey. Concerned, my arse."

"And a very pretty one it is, too."

"You disgust me," said Margaret primly.

Several thousand miles away, in a small and unremarkable Kansan town called Lawrence, Sam Winchester sat at the kitchen table and gnawed on a pencil. It wasn't because he particularly liked the activity, or because said pencil tasted good (although he sometimes wished it did), but because the multiplication table was a total – he snuck a glance around him before thinking it – asshole. Certain people had an uncomfortable habit of hearing his thoughts.

"Dad!" he yelled, throwing the thoroughly chewed pencil through the air in a fit of frustration. "Dad, what's eleven times twelve?"

There was no answer. Sam glared at the little "x" sign. It wasn't fair. He hadn't even turned ten yet, so what was the point in studying even bigger numbers? He knew what Dean would say, and it was nothing helpful. Always the same thing: "Wait until you get to geometry. It's way harder."

"Dad!" he yelled again. His voice echoed eerily through the house. DAD... DAd... Dad... dad. It circled back unanswered. Something wasn't right. A mixture of excitement and apprehension sent a thrill down Sam's spine, and he clambered from his chair with a parting grimace at his worksheet.

The living room was empty, as were all the bedrooms, but their crummy old van still sat stolidly in the garage beside the bikes and tennis rackets. Maybe, if Dean was really not here... Sam reverently reached out towards the glass box that housed The Baseball. But he pulled away at the last moment and dashed back inside, a little frightened at his own daring.

"Addie? Mom? You there?" he tried next. "Mom?!"

"MOM... MOm... Mom... mom!" the house called back mockingly.

"Dean!"

No answer. The basement was empty, too.

"This isn't funny, guys," Sam insisted, trying to hide the tremor in his voice. It broke through, to his mortification. "Dean? Please, Dean? I'm sorry for whatever I did! Dean!"

He sat on the last step and buried his face in his knees. They had all left him. They didn't like him anymore, clearly… they must have thought he caused too much trouble. Dad probably figured he was too bad at math, or Mom had found out about her missing bath plug. Maybe Dean knew about the comic books. He stopped breathing from sheer horror.

And then, most blessed of all blessed sounds, he heard someone calling, "Sam? Sammy?"

Choking on a sob of relief, Sam scrambled to his feet, wiping his nose on his sleeve and struggling to make himself presentable. "Dean? I'm here!"

"What's your dumb little butt doing down there?" Dean bawled back, his irritated voice falling like sweet music on Sam's ears. "The front door is locked!"

Breathing hard, Sam skidded to a stop in front of the screen. The latch was firmly in place.

"Yeah, you moron," Dean told him, evidently reading his mind. His cheeks were sticky with sweat and very red, and he was panting. "We're all outside. Dad said to finish the problem you're working on, and then you can join us." His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Were you crying?"

Sam rubbed a fist against his nose and shook his head. It had just occurred to him that the solution was one hundred and thirty-two. "Just soap in my eye. I'll be back in a second."

"Hey!" Dean yelled after him. "I'm still locked out! Let me in?"

For some unknown reason, Sam hesitated. "Why?" he asked, a bit of doubt creeping in his tone.

"Because I have to go to the bathroom." Dean rolled his eyes and stamped his feet impatiently. "What are you waiting for? Would you please let me in?"

Sam dragged his feet towards the door. It felt like he was walking in quicksand, almost the way it felt to walk in a dream. Don't, some internal voice told him, or rather screamed at him.

"Please?" said Dean, as though he had heard it.

Sam stopped, a sick twist in his gut, and shook his head slowly. "I don't want to."

"Sam," Dean said, more harshly now. "Dad'll throw the football, and Mom won't catch it, and my team's going to lose as usual. Don't be a little dick. I know you're always trying to help him win. Is it going to be a yes or a no?"

Sam blinked rapidly, hoping the moisture gathering in his eyes was because of the brisk breeze.

"Whatever. Fine."

He pulled back the latch, and his brother pushed the door open. He was grinning now, widely and in a distinctly un-Dean way. His eyes shone so brilliantly that they looked almost blue... not the blue of a calm summer sky, but the blue of a glacier, of hard, cold chips of ice.

"Thanks, Sammy," said Dean.

I've noticed that, while this story has a number of hits, faves, and follows, I don't have many reviews. I certainly won't halt chapter uploads because of it (slow and infrequent as they already are… sorry about that!), but it is a bit discouraging not to get feedback. It's hard to improve my writing when I don't hear anything from you guys, which includes both negative and positive comments. Really, if there's something you dislike about the way I write, or errors in grammar/spelling/punctuation or plot continuity, feel free to call me out on them. :)

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!