An Odd Child, an Odd Man, an Odd Master

Harry Potter was an odd child. No one denied that.

Not his parents when his accidental magic came to light. Earlier than normal. Stronger than normal. Less accidental than normal.

Yes it was odd, but they proud.

(Except the small voices in the back of their minds fearing that this is what the prophecy was about and that their precious son would be thrown into battle)

Not his parents' murderer when he looked down at the toddler, who looked back. Not with fear. Not with curiosity, confusion, innocence or anything he would expect.

But pity. As if the child saw the wounds on his soul.

(Not that the mad wizard saw the mother's grace wrap protectively around the boy. And what is killing hate against undying love?)

Not his hateful aunt and uncle. No, they never shied from telling him how odd, how unnatural, how much of a freak, the boy was. They did their best to purge him, but it was futile, because without the oddness, there was no child.

And the oddness they saw was the oddness the aunt expected, so not that odd really.

(What was odd, was the way the child healed animals he found, listened to voices only he could hear tell him stories only he could understand of the beginning of the world and the wonders of it)

Not his bullying cousin. There was something about the boy that wasn't of this world. When he was cornered at would look so sadly at his tormentors. As if he saw something in them, something that their punches hurt more than they did the child.

That look only made him punch and chase and hunt harder.

(When the cousin was attacked by invisible demons, he would remember. And he understand more, not all, but more than he had. It may be too late, but he had to change, for down that path lead a destination no one wished to reach)

Not the child himself. He knew he was odd, different. Because it was himself, he saw all the others did. But he had no model for normal that he cared to emulate, so he was himself.

Quietly, unobtrusively, but always himself.

(He watched, he saw, he learnt. Hoping to see what separated him from other people. Or maybe someone like him, someone he could talk to about the beauty of the world)

Not the half-giant. The boy-who-lived wasn't what he was expecting. Dressed in rags, thin as a willow. But something in his gaze, the smile offered when he saw the cake.

That was right. Right in a way, a unicorn foal playing in the moonlight was only a shadow of.

(Or the vicious grin, that was worse than a basilisk rampaging in a muggle primary school. For though the child was by nature virtuous and forgiving, he still knew hate and vengeance. His relatives would pay, one day)

Not the schoolchildren. Their saviour was just a little odd. A Gryffindor, good. A Quidditch prodigy, good. But he kept to himself. Seemed to be in his own little world. And the older, more practised students swore there was something funky about his magic.

There was, but it might be more accurate to say that he was a star in a sea of torches, something truer, more.

(The castle knew and spoke with the child. Eagerly taking the radiance offered and whispering secrets, stories of students past. Stories of the child's parents that no one was there to share)

Not the Headmaster. Looking down at the sleeping figure surrounded by chocolate, cards and an I.O.U. for a toilet seat. The child did more than he hoped, tore through his plans, did what was hard and right rather than what was easy.

But how could heroism be normal? It had to be odd.

(What the elderly wizard didn't realise was that there was nothing harder for the child than to do nothing. Though, if they ever got the chance to really talk, he'd discover the child objected to the idea of a Greater Good)

Not the child's best friend. It was a hard role to fulfil. The child was nothing like any other he'd met, certainly not like his brothers. The strategist considered, and realised the child wasn't a child. And made it his duty to show him how.

Sometimes for a few minutes, he did, and saw the same right smile the grounds keeper was rewarded with.

(The child played along but couldn't forget himself for long. In his heart of hearts he knew himself to be many things – Warrior, Trickster, Seeker, Leader, and more – but none of them child. No child should have the duty he knew lay before him)

Not the memory wraith. Not when the fearsome basilisk lay down in supplication, hissing §Forgive me, my prince§ Not when the child nodded more regal than the Headboy had ever been enthroned before his pureblood court.

Not when the basilisk turned on him and sent the first of him to damnation.

(The child knew not why the snake said any of that, but accepted it as yet another of his oddities and rolled with it. Fortunately the damsel didn't wake, so he told a story suitably more heroic. He visited the "KIA" snake during his schooling, planning on finding a home for it when he graduated)

Not the child's other best friend, she saw the child's oddness. But accepted it as any number of things she'd been taught to accept. What irked her was the child's approach to his studies. He didn't care for theory, yet given the barest incentive mastered spells beyond what any would believe possible.

Yet a selfish part of her needed to be needed to show him the words.

(She would've been horrified to learn that he needed the help because his trustworthy instincts said that her books were wrong. The truth was simpler and grander than any theory a wizard penned)

Not the godfather, when he saw his godchild again. He'd forgotten just how odd the boy was. He hadn't had a bad memory of the babe, so he had none at all of him in the prison. But seeing him again, revealed again how the child was odd. Odd but wonderful.

And if the child's loving hug did more than any amount of chocolate, well that was to be expected.

(Which is true, though the child's love was greater than any other's. A love that summoned to do battle would lay low a thousand hellish fiends)

Not his fellow champions. For all their protests, none really thought the goblet had made a mistake in choosing him. Especially when he gave Saint George a run for his money.

But they did laugh to themselves at his nervousness at the thought of dancing. It made him human.

(It didn't, but the child had never seen a ball before, so he didn't know what to do. He did what he always did, he survived)

Not the betraying rat. He knew the oddness of the boy who spared him, who even now he was hurting more. An oddness literally bleeding into the ritual sending the final potion a nauseating acid rainbow rather than blinding white.

And as the boy fled, so did his last hope.

(The child had plans for the rat, but he'd been caught by surprise. He really should have expected something, something always happened. It was one of the odd things about him)

Not the toad, she saw wrongness in everything he said and did. The boy courted chaos and lied as easily as he breathed.

Blinded by hate, yet another failed to see his true nature and true oddness.

(She wasn't wrong, the child did lie and revel in chaos. It was just what she called lies were truths and chaos sowing was peace protecting)

Not the mad black witch, odd and broken herself. She might have seen him clearest, but then she was travelling in the opposite direction at about the same speed.

She never admitted it, but she feared the next time she saw the child in battle.

(Luckily she never faced him wand to wand, and was glad the spy was the focus of his rage the time she almost did. In her last battle, she giddy relief let her fall to a raging mother)

Not the schoolyard rival. He had seen the boy's oddness at first glance, which is why he didn't even conceive that he could've been the child he was meant to befriend. The oddities grew and even as he toiled to save his family, he knew the boy would ruin his plans.

Oddly enough, the boy didn't, not for lack of trying.

(Even with the castle talking to him, no one was listening to the boy, so his warnings fell on deaf ears. And his odd behaviour was ignored like so much else)

Not the young man's secret bodyguard. Ever watching, the spy saw more than most and if asked would've been best able to match quirks to each of the boy's parents. People forgot in nostalgia, but each had been about as half as odd as their son.

He would go to his final reward holding these traitorous thoughts to himself.

(It was these oddities that drew him to his precious flower – or more accurately her to him, and repelled him from the boy's father. She was sweet and kind, he brought ruin and chaos)

Not even Death. When it met its new Master in the guise of his beloved headmaster, it saw him truly for nothing can hide from Death (except its Master's forebears with its cloak). And really should've expected this, only its little brother could actually derail plans from the beginning of creation like this.

Once his odd little master had returned to the world of the living, Death raised a glass in silent salute.

(Not that Death was really upset. Very rarely did something or someone surprise him. Even with freewill, millennia of observation made humans quite predictable. The last to surprise him had fittingly been his Master's ancestor)

So if he hadn't been cut out of the loop, Lucifer wouldn't have been so surprised when he summoned Death with sacrifice in Carthage, Missouri.

Instead of the dreaded fourth horseman, the devil received an unassuming young man. Dressed in black, a hooded cloak even, but the fallen archangel's sensed that this wasn't death. Someone Important but not Death.

Staring into the sparkling green eyes, Lucifer couldn't think anything other than that something odd was going on.

In a tone suggesting that the speaker was starting to get tired of all this nonsense (which is quite a demeaning way to label an integral part of the Apocalypse) the stranger asked:

"Who and you and what do you want?"

First of three ideas for a HP/Supernatural crossover floating around in my head. Two-and-a-half of which feature angel!Harry, cause I love him.

Not that by the final drabble Harry knows about his angelic heritage really. Plenty of cryptic hints, and really how can a mortal be the Master of Death? So he would learn as the story went along and he joined Team Free-Will. He would show great potential but also great ignorance, thus preventing a complete short-circuiting of the Supernatural plot.

Probably slash. Sam/Harry most likely.

The actual plot bunny follows, which is the scenes revealing Harry's odd heritage. So beware spoilers I guess.

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The Trickster grimaced to himself, why was he here again? He was a Norse god, he really had no place at a Methodist bake sale in Surrey of all places.

Oh right, he was hiding from his adopted family. They really needed to loosen up, it wasn't his fault that the pantheon was old news. Get with the century deities! Smell the chocolate!

Anyway, on his sort of vacation, he was serving out just and ironic punishments on the deserving in England. Well until some hunter or some such "killed" him. He'd been dealing with a particularly unwholesome father, who wouldn't ever hurt anyone again.

Not that the Trickster thought that plaguing the guy with Bieber until he jumped was all that great a trick.

As a reward for a job well done, he'd wandered into this church bake sale and was amusing himself at the incongruencies between appearance, action and soul of the congregation.

He'd never be sure how it happened (especially after vowing not to in face of his children) but at some point he found himself waking up in a strange bedroom.

Looking to his right he saw the housewife it seemed he'd taken advantage of. Well, he could see why. She was beautiful, inside and out, cheesy as it was. Bright red hair, a full figure. If the word had been coined, he would have called her a cougar.

He saw the lines making themselves comfortable on her face, and saw that her husband was not so faithful himself. He'd offered comfort as thanks for the best caramel slice he'd ever tasted. Just an ear to listen and vague promises of retribution, not that.

A gasp from the door drew his attention to the pony-faced little girl at the door. Suddenly reminded of the consequences he might be causing, the god willed himself up and dressed.

With a snap of his fingers, memories adjusted so that nothing had happened. Just a lucky full night's rest for the mother.

The Trickster wouldn't know two things:

1) The girl may have forgotten but something in her knew that something had violated her and her family

2) His daughter would have his smile

Charlus Potter was not by nature a superstitious man. However, wizardry and prayer had failed him. Even some of the darker options that he'd tried. The others asked for things he wouldn't give – his wife, innocents, or worse. More than himself: which was all that he could give.

So it came to this.

The new moon hung black in a cloudless sky above the crossroads. The wizard checked his offering box – a moving photo (kind of old to not have his wife Dorea), some graveyard dirt (from Godric's Hollow, it seemed right) and a bone from a black cat (his dear Hogwarts familiar, Sooty, dead for a decade). Steeling himself he buried the box.

Normally a crossroads demon would've responded and granted the elderly wizard's wish for a son and heir. He wouldn't have seen James make it to Hogwarts but would've died happy in his son.

However, all the offerings were magic, and thus caught the attention of a being far more powerful than any demon.

Above wizards, demons, gods and angels were the Powers. The highest Powers were God/Life/Creation and Death/Destruction, but there were others. Such as Fate/Continuation would drew the path between. Or the Deviant/Transformation who did his best to undo his siblings' plans, and had been in this universe since he tempted Eve with a fruit.

"Good evening, Charlus."

A deal was struck, and Charlus went home and conceived a son that very night. Extremely fortunate, the wizard would see his son fall in love and receive his Headboy badge, but not graduate.

And if James had an inexplicable prankster streak; and a need to ruin plans and cause chaos, Charlus didn't care.