It was three in the morning. He had only gotten an hour's worth of sleep. And someone was ringing him. One look at the number had him glaring at it.
Kathleen. She must have gotten too drunk while partying and decided he was a better option than her dad.
Harry groaned, went to the kitchen and grabbed a large amount of hot tea with enough sugar to keep him awake, then took his bike out and apparated to the first corner near where she said she was. He rode two blocks before he found them, and a quick diagnostic charm revealed two of her friends were on the very border of suffering from alcohol poisoning.
Kathleen blinked, her eyes bloodshot.
"How'd you get here so fast?"
"I rode. How many am I taking home?" he asked.
"About six," she said.
"Let me tie up my bike and I'll drive," sighed Harry. A quick sticking charm took care of that, and he made very sure to leave the windows open. Kathleen sat in the passenger seat, and her friends all took window seats, except for two that were already passed out in the middle.
He was dropping her off at the first hospital he could find and hitting the other three with a sticking charm so they didn't try to leave the car. He was also going to explain to their parents where they had been and what they had been doing, so they got the maximum punishment out of drinking.
Hangovers were only really effective with your parents yelling at you and deliberately making your morning miserable, as Kathleen discovered.
Harry drove safely, and aside from the quick stop to the hospital explaining that two of six girls had drunk too much and might suffer from poisoning, he took them all home and even walked them to their doors. They were too drunk to care what he was telling their parents.
The mothers and fathers who opened the door were irritated, but not at Harry. The fact he had offered to drive them home, but neglected to mention he would be telling their parents what they had been doing was something the adults appreciated.
They were almost to her home when Harry got pulled over because Kathleen had the worst timing. She threw up outside the window right as they were passing by an unmarked police car.
"If we're arrested you're paying for the ticket," he told her.
Harry slowed down and parked the car while grabbing his license and the registration.
The cop walked up with a flashlight, and Harry knew if he didn't have a good explanation he would definitely get a ticket, because the man clearly had a bad night already.
"License and registration?"
Harry handed them over.
"Says here the owner is a Kathleen Stabler."
"She's the one who threw up out the window," supplied Harry.
"Have you been drinking tonight?"
"No sir. I told my friend to call me if she went out partying again and was too drunk to drive, since I would rather be woken up at three in the morning than find out she got killed for being an idiot. I've already had to drop off two of her friends at the hospital because of alcohol poisoning, and their parents weren't too pleased they had been out so late," said Harry honestly.
The cop looked at him in the eye, as if trying to see if he was lying.
"Mind breathing into this?" he said, pulling out a portable breathalyzer.
Harry did, and when it came up negative the cop let him go. Harry couldn't help a parting shot though.
"If it's any consolation, her dad's a cop too, and he's liable to give her a long, loud lecture about drinking when she gets up in the morning," said Harry. The cop walked away laughing.
It took him twenty minutes to reach Kathleen's house, and when he did he texted Elliot from the driveway so he would know his daughter had been out.
Elliot woke up, saw the text and then went to the front door and found Harry helping Kathleen up the stairs since she was staggering around.
"What happened?"
"I told her to call me if she went out and got drunk again. I'd rather not attend her funeral, thank you, even if I did get pulled over because she threw up outside the window in front of an unmarked cop car. Fortunately they let me off since I wasn't drinking," said Harry.
Thank magic today was a Saturday. Normally he got up to watch the morning cartoons with the twins, but today he was more likely to sleep in.
Elliot helped maneuver Kathleen into her bed. She would get a lecture in the morning once the hangover kicked in.
"So why'd you wake me up instead of just dropping her off?"
"And risk getting shot because you heard someone in the house when everyone is supposed to be asleep? Besides, I woke up the parents of her friends that were with her too and explained to them where their daughters had been all night. I told her I would drive her home...I never said a word about not busting her," said Harry grinning evilly.
Elliot laughed. Harry was a good kid, but that didn't mean he didn't have a mischievous side. And when he saw the bike on top of the car he helped Harry put it in the garage and let him sleep in the guest room until morning, when he would head into work. Considering Harry lived three blocks from the precinct that meant he could drop him off.
Kathleen was in her own personal hell. And Harry, damn him, was laughing at her while eating scrambled eggs. Eggs her dad made deliberately because Harry told him she had been drinking again.
"Why are you even here anyway?"
"No way am I riding my bike back home at four in the morning after driving you home. Your dad let me sleep in the guest room so he could drop me off in the morning," said Harry cheekily.
Olivia would probably be surprised by him showing up, considering he slept in the shop on weekends so he could get a jump on work. Then again, maybe not considering Elliot had likely called her already.
Unlike Kathleen, Harry didn't have a set curfew considering Olivia trusted him and he went to bed early anyway.
Elliot dropped him off at the precinct, and Harry made his way to the house. Olivia was up and making breakfast, though she blinked when she saw him walk in.
"You're home early. Normally you're at the shop on weekends unless you have a game."
"Had to drive Kathleen home at three in the morning, so Elliot dropped me off. Figured I'd at least get some tea before apparating back to work," said Harry. Which consisted of him cooking breakfast for the other three, since Sirius was banned from the kitchen and the twins had no idea how to cook.
"Wait. You drove Kathleen home last night?"
"She and her friends were too wasted to drive, and I told her I would come and do it as long as she called me. She just chose a particularly bad time to call, so in revenge I woke Elliot up and told him and the parents of her six friends where they had been all night. I even got pulled over because she threw up right as we were passing an unmarked car," said Harry.
"You didn't get a ticket did you?" asked Olivia.
"I wasn't drinking, I was obeying all the rules of the road, and the only reason they stopped us was because she was clearly intoxicated. I don't think the cop even noticed the badge you gave me when a few months after I started living here in my wallet."
People with cops in the close family, like say, their mother or father, were sometimes given courtesy shields with the parents number and precinct on it. Olivia had given Harry one in the event he ended up in hot water or in the wrong place at the wrong time so he wouldn't accidentally be arrested. He had never used it once since moving to New York. He generally forgot he even had it in his wallet.
Kathleen had one as well, but she wasn't exactly happy with her dad most days because he was often away from home.
"So what exactly happened?"
"Kathleen woke me up at three, I grabbed my bike and apparated about a block or so from where she was and made her think I rode there. I drove her and three girls back to wherever they lived and dropped two at the first decent hospital I could find because they was one drink away from alcohol poisoning. Once I was sure they would call their parents to come pick her up, I took the rest home and helped Elliot bring Kathleen in where I slept in the guest room until morning."
With any other teenager, Olivia would have trouble believing. With Harry, she fully believed him because nothing else would get him out of the house at three in the morning when he had been previously sleeping outside of an emergency. He liked his sleep. And he was legally allowed to drive, but he preferred not to because he hated it.
"So what are your plans for the weekend?"
"Feed the beasts in the shop since they can't cook, work until it's time for practice, then head back and sleep until my Sunday shift. Oh, and possibly visit Elliot's house again."
"Why?"
"I sorta offered to babysit the younger kids and insure Kathleen didn't sneak out despite being grounded for two months. Elliot said he didn't mind if I stole the distributor cap from the spare car, so long as I left it somewhere he could find it later."
Olivia grinned. Harry was surprisingly good with the younger kids...probably because that was roughly the same mental age as his uncle/godfather Sirius (she still wasn't aware he was Padfoot or that he had slept in Harry's room for two months) and the twins.
Elliot picked Harry up from school a week later. He had agreed to babysit so Elliot and his wife Kathy could have a proper date night for the first time in years. And with Kathleen in major trouble, she had to help whether she wanted to or not.
And she didn't want to, but Harry cast a few notice-me-not charms on her electronics so she couldn't find them to call her friends. And he had hidden the phones.
Harry was even armed with some toys that were sure to drive Kathleen up the wall. Elliot was just glad Harry planned to take them with him or hide them when they got back. Almost all the toys were noisy and extremely headache inducing for parents.
Harry on the other hand came prepared. He had a pair of earplugs that filtered out the noisy toys and let him hear everything else. He mostly hoped for a nice, quiet evening.
Alas, Fate it seemed felt that Harry had spent long enough without something bad happening. And it would give Kathleen a new reason to appreciate her dad for what he did.
Harry was about to put the younger kids to bed when he heard the distinct sound of the glass breaking from the second floor. Kathleen knew better than to push her luck in concerns with her dad, and the rest of the kids were already asleep, or getting there. Besides, Kathleen was in her room with the door locked and headphones on.
He carefully pulled out his invisibility cloak and stalked downstairs.
That was when he heard the whispering.
"Come on! Hurry up before the cop gets back!"
"Relax, the only ones here are the brats and if they can't call with the jammer up and the lines cut. Worse comes to worse we can just threaten them or use 'em as hostages! Remember, no names!"
Harry's blood ran cold. Thieves had broken in, and worse had cut off the communication. And he couldn't exactly call for help because they would likely hear him.
Which left option three.
He slowly went up to Kathleen's room, unlocked it with a charm and quietly put his hand around her mouth.
"Kathleen, keep quiet and follow my lead. There's some people downstairs and they might come up if we make too much noise," hissed Harry.
Kathleen turned to ask him if he was joking, except that her headphones were off she could hear them as well.
"First we need to move the younger kids to another room. Are there any on this floor with a window that leads outside on something they could scale, or even to that treehouse out back?"
"The guest room you stayed in. It has a lock and the roof extends enough that I could hand them over to you," said Kathleen. She had always thought that treehouse was stupid once she turned fourteen, but now she couldn't wait to get into it. At least Harry had an idea of what to do.
"First we get the younger kids. Keep them as quiet as possible. Then we'll jam the locks on the guest bedroom and barricade it while we get everyone into the tree house."
Kathleen nodded, too scared of intruders in her home to argue. She was as quiet as she could be picking up her siblings and moving them into the guest bedroom. Harry made sure that the intruders downstairs didn't notice them by discreetly using tripping hexes and charms to tie their shoelaces together to cover the noise. They were too busy cursing their partner's clumsiness to notice that Kathleen had moved the kids.
Once they finished with that, Harry carefully moved the little ones into the tree fort Elliot had built for Kathleen when she was eight. He kept it maintained, but mostly it sat disused.
The moment she was inside with the still sleepy runts, Harry did something devious.
He used a spell the Sparkies used when they wanted to trap enemies in the house without actually locking anything. It turned a house into a death trap.
Or a cage, in this instance.
One long phrase in olde English, and the house became impenetrable from the inside out. Literally. They couldn't break a window to escape even if they wanted to, unless one of them was a wizard and knew the counter spell.
Harry wasn't finished though.
With the intruders trapped inside (not that they knew it just yet), that meant he might have to deal with the getaway driver or their extra accomplices.
"Harry?" Kathleen called quietly.
"Shhh. I have to make sure they didn't leave anyone outside, but then we can try to call for help," said Harry, putting his finger to his mouth. Kathleen nodded. "Can you keep them calm until I take care of the others?"
"Yeah. Be careful!"
Harry gave her a calm grin, before easily landing like a cat.
He slipped into the dark of the night and went looking for a van out of place.
He found it a block away, with the driver not even paying attention! He took out the knife Elliot gave him and slashed all four tires in quick succession. Then he stuffed a decent sized rock into the exhaust pipe, making it impossible to work.
He then hit the driver with a stunner, making it look like he fell asleep. A quick charm to see if anyone was inside, and he fried the electronics.
He quickly made his way back to the tree house where Kathleen was waiting.
She was still freaked, but once he got there she calmed down because she had long figured out Harry always kept a cool head in a crisis.
Harry pulled out his cell phone, and since the jammer was now fried he had a signal.
And the first person he called was Elliot, quickly followed by Olivia to let her know what was going on.
About two seconds after he called them both, he heard one of the thieves trip on a toy he had brought over, setting it off and making a racket. The thief cursed and went to see if he had woken any of the kids, only to realize that they weren't there. It was pretty clear that they had escaped, which was when he raised the alarm to the others.
By the time they figured out the doors and windows were jammed, Elliot and Olivia had called in the cavalry. Several cops surrounded the house, and it wasn't until Elliot and Kathy (with Olivia arriving five minutes after them) that Harry and Kathleen came out of the treehouse.
Kathleen was quick to hug her father in relief while Olivia helped Harry bring the younger kids down. They were still sleepy, as Kathleen and Harry hadn't told them anything in order to avoid them making a scene.
"Their driver is about a block away. Look for the knifed tires," said Harry.
"What happened?" asked Elliot.
"I was putting them to sleep when I heard something downstairs. I came down a few steps and listened, and I realized that they knew there was a cop here. I think they had cased the place, but weren't expecting me to be here as well. I made sure Kathleen and the others were out of the house and that the driver couldn't go anywhere before I called you. They had a signal jammer in the van and they cut the phone lines."
Elliot was looking over his kids with a professional eye. Aside from Kathleen being shaken up, the younger ones were fine, if a bit sleepy.
Until they had the placed looked over and a new security system put in (seeing as how the one Elliot had in place was compromised), Olivia offered to let them crash at her house for a while. If necessary Harry could sleep at the shop, which was where the twins lived full time since turning 18.
However, it was pretty clear Kathleen was shaken up.
Which was why Harry was going to see if he couldn't get the same 'Pass' Olivia had to know about magic so he could have wards placed around Elliot's home to keep this from happening twice.
