Bobby was about to go to sleep when he got a phone call from an amused Sam.
"What the hell is so important that you call me at..." Bobby looked at the clock, "Three in the goddamn morning?!"
"Dean ran into Patrick, and you said that you wanted to play him again to give Teddy another chance at being a kid. Sorry if I woke you."
"You sure it's Pat?"
"Dean looks as old as you were before you reversed his magic," confirmed Sam. Bobby heard Dean curse Sam out on the other end of the phone.
"Send me a picture and I'll be there in a few hours. But first I am getting some damn sleep!" said Bobby with a bark.
Sam wished him goodnight and Bobby closed his phone. He saw a sleepy Teddy come in, his eyes red.
"Can't sleep Pup?"
"Heard yelling."
"Sam and Dean found Patrick. I promised you after Cas broke those spells that you would have a second chance to enjoy your childhood and you know I hate lying to my Pups," said Bobby. Teddy nodded and leaned into his arms.
He missed his uncle. Harry had always been kind to him and he knew if Bobby had known about the hell the magicals had put him through that he would have done something about it. Bobby was very protective of his Pups...something Sam and Dean would learn if the chance ever arose.
It wasn't any surprise that Bobby's animagus for was a wolf the size of a Warg from the Lord of the Rings movies. Though according to Harry before he left, he was actually a dire wolf, an extinct magical breed said to be descended from Fenrirsûlfr himself.
Bobby and Teddy were in some no name town where Sam and Dean were.
"Hey puppy," said Dean. He looked like hell.
"So what's the plan?"
"I'll go play against Patrick and offer him a few extra years so that Teddy gets his childhood back and Dean goes back to looking like his fugly self," said Bobby.
"HEY!"
Sam snickered. He liked this younger Bobby...he had an amusing sense of humor and he smiled more.
"You three stay put while I clear this up," said Bobby.
"Have fun!" Sam called out, before he continued his lessons with Teddy on how to use a computer.
Dean grumbled in the corner.
It took Bobby five minutes to find the Irish wizard, and two minutes to head to the man's table.
"Didn't expect to see you again Black," said Patrick.
"The arrogant hunter you took twenty five off of was my son. I'm here to get it back and then some... one of my Pups needs a second chance to grow up since things went worse after I left," said Bobby calmly.
"The green-eyed moron who thought he was good at poker?" said Patrick, eyebrow up.
"Dean's an idiot, but he has a good heart," said Bobby.
"Let's play then. How many years did you need taken off?"
"Dean gets all his years back plus one extra, and I need ten taken off Teddy Lupin-Black," said Bobby. Patrick brought out a magical contract, standard for when he played against people with a magical core.
Taking ten years off would put Teddy roughly at the same age as Jesse.
Bobby signed it without hesitation. He didn't need his magic to beat Patrick...the first time he had run into the man he had deliberately lost to get rid of his followers. His luck was insanely good...a side effect of having such crappy luck when it came to hunting and his adventures.
In less than an hour, Bobby had reversed what had been done to Dean, given Teddy his childhood back, and as an added bonus when Patrick got annoyed with him, lost two more years off his own age.
"I'll never understand how you always have such bloody good luck when we play!" complained Patrick.
"Next time we'll play for beers," said Bobby.
"I'll hold you to that Black!" said Patrick, his mood sour.
Bobby had his arms full of a very cheerful werewolf cub when he returned to the hotel room. Sam looked at him suspiciously.
"Did you get younger again?"
"Patrick got irritated with me and bet a few extra years. Figured I might as well put them on my tab instead of Dean's. Unless you want him to be the same age as you," said Bobby.
"No way in hell," said Sam immediately.
Three weeks later...
Bobby was worried. Sam and Dean hadn't called him in two days, and they normally gave him reports of where they were so he could ask around for hunts in the area.
Finally he couldn't take it anymore.
"Teddy, you're going to visit with Jesse for a bit. I'm worried about the idjits," said Bobby.
"Okay dad!" said Teddy.
Ever since he had lost ten years, Teddy had regressed to a younger age mentally to recover from his ordeal. And since he had always associated Bobby with good things he started calling him Dad and Bobby had never bothered to correct him.
Dean and Sam considered the half-werewolf as their little brother, and Dean had even transferred most of his overprotective tendencies towards Teddy instead of Sam. Sam couldn't be more relieved about that, since it meant that Dean wasn't coddling him.
Once he had dropped Teddy and Cassie off with Jesse and his parents (Cassie was the go-to babysitter of choice) Bobby called Castiel.
"Castiel."
"Cas, I need a lift. Sam and Dean haven't picked up their phones in two days, and I'm getting worried,"said Bobby.
Cas appeared without warning, and it was only his years as a wizard that kept him from cursing the angel out for his sudden appearance.
Cas grabbed Bobby's shoulder and they appeared where Dean's Impala was.
While Castiel had enchanted the Winchesters and the Blacks (Teddy and Bobby) to be hidden from angels, Bobby had enchanted the car so that only the angels keyed into the spell could find it.
It was a way for Castiel to find the brothers without having to call them. Wherever the Impala was, Dean was usually in the general vicinity. He loved that car too much to leave it alone for too long.
Cas went in first, and Bobby heard a squawk of surprise from the angel. He waited for the angel to return, but when he was still gone for twenty minutes, Bobby went in.
What he found had him blinking.
Why the hell was there a fifties sitcom in the middle of the warehouse?
His cap hid his eyes, so it took the boys a few minutes to recognize him. Castiel reappeared, though he looked rather harried.
Before the trickster could send the angel away twice, Bobby's patience snapped.
Loki found himself on the wrong end of the Elder wand and pinned in a sudden ring of holy fire. When he got too close he yelped the moment he recognized it for what it was.
"How'd you do that?"
"You are a sucky guardian spirit, Loki," growled Bobby.
Loki blinked.
"What did you just call me?"
"You heard me Trickster! You were tasked by Sirius Orion Black to protect his godson shortly before the magicals turned him into their personal scapegoat, and yet not once have you done your goddamn job! And now I find you're torturing my sons and worrying me half to death because you want them to 'play their parts'! Here's a newsflash for you, Loki, I'm not letting either of those overgrown peacocks getting their claws into my sons!" snarled Bobby.
"Bobby..." started Sam.
"Bobby, what the hell are you talking about guardians?" asked Dean.
"Bobby? As in Robert Singer?! What the hell happened to you?!" said Loki in shock.
Bobby had enough, and yanked his hat off his head, revealing a faded lightning-shaped scar. Loki swore rather impressively as he realized what was going on.
"Dammit...if I had known that was who you were..." he cursed to himself.
Loki had been approached by Sirius Black by his true name as Gabriel the Angel and asked by the man to keep an eye on his godson until he could do his job as godfather. However Gabriel had never been taken off protecting Harry because of circumstances beyond their control, and he had forgotten all about it until he heard about the kid becoming Death's Equal Among Mortals, or as the humans mistakenly believed, his Master.
And by that time it was too late to do anything, because Harry had been fully grown.
Then he went missing, and Gabriel had been unable to find him.
Now here he was, under a new name and calling him to task for not doing his one job that he had in the past several centuries right. And calling the Winchesters his sons no less?
Why did he have the feeling his Father was behind this cosmic prank?
"Bobby, what's going on?" asked Sam.
"My godfather, the one who fell through the Veil, asked his patron god to protect his godson and the heir of the Black family in the event he was kept from him. But this bastard never once showed up to do his job, not even when Karen was possessed and I actually called for his help! Now here he is, trying to force you two into playing the part of vessels and I'm not going to let him," growled Bobby.
"Easy! I couldn't have gotten near you with the wards in the way, and by the time they broke you were moving all over the place!"
"Bullshit! I know for a fact that I wasn't under any wards around the time the first letters were being sent to me! I was in the middle of the ocean, and the wards themselves had broken long before they even went out!" said Bobby.
Loki winced. If he continued to torment the brothers, then there was a very high chance he would fall and lose what little Grace he had left in him. And he really, really didn't want to fall, no matter how much he hated his brothers fighting.
"England was considered a no-angel zone after Voldemort was reduced to a shade. And by the time we were allowed back in, your anger towards the magicals kept us from going near it," said Castiel. Loki breathed a sigh of relief at the save.
"And after I left England? I prayed for three straight hours before I finally had to kill Karen," growled Bobby.
"You were under another name. It was likely he didn't realize who was calling for him," said Castiel. Gabriel had a lot to answer for, but he would rather not have a pissed off Bobby Singer killing his brother.
Bobby didn't lower his wand, but his glare at Loki dropped slightly.
"So which one is he? I can fell his Grace from here Castiel, so don't lie to me," said Bobby.
"Gabriel," said Loki, not bothering to hide it.
"The arch angel?" said Sam, eyebrow raising.
"Yup," said Gabriel, popping the 'p' sound.
What Bobby did next had the brother's jaw dropping and Gabriel looking very put out.
"In that case. I am calling in the debt you owe to the Black family for not doing the job given and transferring it to the idjits over here. Which means if you try to pull your trickster magic on them again until I call it off, your Grace will be stripped from you and you'll be no better than Castiel over here," said Bobby.
"Oh come on!" whined Gabriel as he felt the magic settle over him and the Winchesters.
"If you had done your job, you wouldn't be stuck with them," said Bobby vindictively.
Let it never be said that Bobby Singer didn't know how to hold one hell of a grudge.
And to top off Gabriel's new sentence as the Winchester brother's personal guardian angel, Bobby slipped enough laxatives in the arch angel's secret stash of sweets to make him glued to the toilet for a solid week.
Never piss off a Marauder, let alone one who had no issue getting his revenge on angels without fear of being smited.
Dean and Sam took a full month to get over what Bobby had done in binding Gabriel to them.
Gabriel quickly found that being called to task for his inability to do a simple guardian angel job right wasn't nearly as bad as he had initially assumed. Bobby wasn't asking him to do everything for the brothers, just to show up when they got in over their heads, like when they planned to face Lucifer with the Colt.
Bobby was against it, as he had read somewhere that Lucifer wasn't a demon in the book that he never let Sam or Dean near if he could help it.
Gabriel popped into the salvage yard because Bobby wanted someone to talk some sense into the brothers since they had trouble getting it through their thick heads that Lucifer couldn't be killed with the methods they were used to.
"Hello muttonheads!" said Gabriel waltzing in like he owned the place. Bobby hit him with a stinging hex on the ass on principle.
Gabriel double-checked the chocolate that Teddy gave him, since Bobby had hit him with a laxative that way before once.
"So what's up?"
"Who is this?" asked Ellen.
"Gabriel, the arch angel. You might know him better as the Trickster Loki. Don't bother shooting him...we don't have anything to kill arch angels in stock," said Bobby.
"Love you too, Black," said Gabriel flippantly. Bobby flipped him the bird.
"Why did he call you Black?" asked Jo.
"I called in a debt he owes the family and tied his sorry feathered ass to the idjits. He has to come when called or he'll lose a good portion of his powers like Castiel has," said Bobby offhand.
"Must be some debt, to tie an arch angel down," said Ellen.
"More like Black can hold one hell of a grudge," muttered Gabriel.
"It was a simple guardian angel job! Castiel could have done it with one eye closed! But no, the great Loki has to forget about the fact that one of his followers asked him to do one SIMPLE thing!" said Bobby irate.
Gabriel winced. Bobby's magic was flaring. He always got touchy when the subject was brought up and Gabriel was nearby to hex.
"So why did you call me?" he asked, quickly changing the subject before Bobby's magic exploded something.
"We need someone to convince the idjits that the Colt isn't going to work on your more irritating older brother," said Bobby.
"Which one? Lucy or Mikey?"
"Lucy."
"Yeah no. The Colt was made specifically for anything that originates in the Pit, and Lucy is from heaven originally. Besides that, you had to remake it and Ruby gave you a flawed way of doing it. At best it can take out some of the lesser demons or an arch duke if you're really lucky, but Lucifer? You'd be going on a suicide mission."
"I thought as much. And it would take too long to make a new one," said Bobby gruffly.
As Death's Equal, he could make his own Colt. But it would take months, and that was time he didn't have.
"So what made you think you could take Lucifer on this early anyway?"
"We got a tip from Crowley that he would be in some town next week," said Dean.
"Oh, that. I would think Bobby would be able to sense what Lucy's planning without being told second hand from Crowley," said Gabriel.
"Why's that?"
"Out of the horsemen, only Death is still below. Lucifer's going to force him to rise even though he's doing his best to avoid that. Death hates being under the control of Lucy, and knowing that ass he would make Death use necromancy," said Gabriel.
"Which is something Death hates almost as much as he does phylacteries," said Bobby.
"What are..."
"God, read a D and D manual sometime Dean! Phylacteries are objects that have someone soul stuff in them so they become a lich," said Sam.
"Pretty much," said Bobby.
Contrary to popular belief, Dungeons and Dragons was not full of shit. More than half of the things used in the games were based off the magical communities, since one of the creators was a half-blood from a pure blood family that had been kicked out because he had been more interested in playing games than running the family business.
The fact that he had become richer than the minor pure blood clan because of his game had been a small bit of irony.