Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor The Dresden Files.

Of Wands and Staves

Chapter Thirteen-

Of all of the arguments John thought he would be having, this was not one of them. Harry had only just woken up after his tearful confession the night before in the Hogwarts infirmary, and he'd thought the child would be glad to be home. Why wouldn't he be? The school had clearly been awful, and John had figured that Harry would prefer to never set foot in the school again. Ideally, Harry would have woken up, they would have all shared a nice breakfast, and John would have been able to go to work secure in the knowledge that his son was safe at home with his lover. Instead, he got this.

"I can't believe you pulled me out of school!" Harry was raging. He picked up what was close at hand, in this case a cup, and flung it at John's head. He missed, because John was smart enough to duck, but still. "I want to go back!"

"No. You're not going back until next year at the earliest." That wasn't even up for debate, especially not now. They'd already pulled him for the year. They weren't going to take him back now, even if they couldn't force him to withdraw entirely. "Calm down, Harry, and eat your breakfast like a civilized child." He stood up and approached the boy, although he was admittedly uncertain as to how he was going to deal with this mess.

"I'm not a child!" Harry howled. "I want to go back to Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione! We needed to find out whether it was Hermione or me at the top of the class! This isn't fair!"

Harry, the elder, snickered into his cup of coffee. John shot him a dirty look, and the bastard just laughed louder. When Harry, the younger, made to fling something else, however, that appeared to be the wizard's limit.

Harry picked up another thing to throw, this time a plate, and when he launched it at John Harry the elder snapped out a set of words in that fake latin he adored so much and a barrier appeared between John and Harry and the little one. Upon a moment of closer examination, the barrier actually surrounded the little one rather than simply separating him from them.

"What did you do?" Harry shouted, and pounded his hands against the barrier. His young face was turning red in a combination of temper and frustration. John was almost certain that he'd never seen his child so upset about something, and that included the time Molly had almost run over Mouse with a golf cart.

"You're acting like a toddler, throwing things and stamping your feet until you get your way," Harry answered cheerfully, and now it was John's turn to snort with laughter. "So, until you remember that you aren't a toddler, but you are still our child, you'll stay in there."

Harry's nose wrinkled, his face went even redder, and the little one shouted, "It isn't like you're my real parents anyway! I don't need to listen to you! Why don't you just go back to running your criminal empire, anyway?"

Every word was like a dagger in John's heart. He crumpled, his knees giving out from under him. Harry didn't really think like that, did he? He'd done everything he could to give him a good, decent home life. He knew that he didn't always have time to be home with Harry, but he'd tried so hard. And he did everything he could to keep his work away from his home.

He knew that his work wasn't exactly what most would consider to be moral, but he did his best, didn't he? He didn't involve children. He actively punished those who did involve children. And if it wasn't him running the streets, well, somebody else would. Didn't Harry understand that? Of course he didn't. He was a child. How could he possibly understand something like the lesser of two evils?

"It's okay, he doesn't mean it, he's just upset," Harry was murmuring in his ear, and John realized that his wizard was holding him close, soothing him, rocking him just a little bit.

He clung to Harry and tried to make himself calm down. Harry was a child, and he was upset. He didn't mean what he'd said. John knew that, he did. He just had to keep repeating that to himself over and over again.

ooOOooOOoo

Harry regretted the words the moment they left his lips. He didn't mean that. He knew that his dad was the coolest dad ever, and that he'd taken him from a pretty bad situation. He didn't really remember much about the Dursleys other than the cramped space that had been his cupboard, and the gnawing hunger in his stomach. His dad had taken him away from that, and Uncle Harry was awesome. He shouldn't have said that.

Dad just wanted what was best for him, and Harry knew that Hogwarts wasn't as safe as Dad had believed it to be. But he'd loved it there, loved the chance to learn about his biological parents even if he hadn't found much information. Just being in the castle where they'd gone to school helped him to feel closer to them in a way that he hadn't ever felt before. He hadn't even realized he'd wanted it until he had it. And Dad wanted to take that away from him. That definitely wasn't right.

But that didn't mean that he should have said what he did to Dad! That wasn't nice of him, and he'd really upset him when he hadn't meant to do that at all. Not to mention that he really, really hadn't meant it.

"I'm sorry!" he called desperately, and the barrier keeping him penned up dropped after Uncle Harry heard him say it. Harry darted out immediately and launched himself into his Dad's arms, crying too. He didn't know why he was crying, but he was, and now he couldn't stop. He'd been so scared, and then so upset to be home when he just wanted to make sure that Ron was okay, and then to find out he might not get to go back... but still. He wasn't a baby, and he should know better than to act like one.

"You know that your Uncle and I are just worried about you," Dad was whispering to him, his voice a little bit hoarse and choked.

Harry felt like dirt for making his Dad cry. "I know," Harry whispered back as his tears subsided. "But I don't wanna stop going to school at Hogwarts! I really like it there, and I'm learning a lot! Please, Daddy, at least think about it?"

Dad sighed, Harry could feel it. "You can't go back this year. I already withdrew you, and the Headmaster is going to owl us your final grades. But… we can discuss next year. If you do choose to go back, there will be a lot of changes to how this works. For one thing, you won't be sending off anymore generic 'everything's fine' letters."

Harry giggled and said, "But everything was fine when I was writing the letters!"

He'd known that wasn't going to fly for long, and he was amazed that they'd put up with it for an entire semester. He just really hadn't wanted to tell them about trying to figure out what the Cerberus had been trying to protect and trying to figure out which teacher was trying to take it. He was still a little disappointed that it hadn't been Professor Snape after the stone, actually.

"All right, my two troublemakers," Uncle Harry said, and clapped them both on the shoulder. "Can we at least delay the rest of this conversation for breakfast? Because that rumbling you hear isn't from a Cerberus, it's from my stomach. And it's begging for food."

Dad chuckled, and Harry giggled again. If Dad could laugh and if Uncle Harry could make jokes, then Harry was pretty sure that everything would be okay. And if everything was okay, there was every chance that he'd get to go back to Hogwarts the next year!

But it was weird. Dad had implied that it was his choice about going back to Hogwarts next year. He would have thought for sure that he wouldn't have been allowed back no matter what after the incident with the Stone. So… why was he getting a choice?

Because Harry knew that Hogwarts wasn't safe, especially not now that he'd actually had a run-in with Voldemort himself. He still felt a little bit guilty about not telling his Dad about that, but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him, right? Besides, maybe if he knew about Voldemort, Dad wouldn't let him go back to Hogwarts at all.

At least now he stood a chance of going back, even if he wasn't sure why he was still being given that chance.

"Of course," Dad said, drawing Harry's attention back to breakfast, "I don't know that we'll be able to eat much of anything as somebody seems to have destroyed all of our tableware."

Harry's face flushed with embarrassment rather than temper. Oops.