A/N: 6 months wasn't my intention when I warned about slow updates! But please, because it's likely to happen again, instead of leaving anon reviews about when/if it'll update, please check my tumblr (aj-writes-fic) for info instead, because you know by now that I'm literally incapable of responding to anonymous reviews.

Edited 29/10/17 - Removed last scene

Chapter 2 – Truth or Dare:

Harry didn't resurface from the basement until Sam started sending him texts asking where he'd run off to. They didn't sound worried or emotional at all, so Harry figured that whatever discussion they'd had without him had ended on at least neutral terms, and Dean wasn't currently on the warpath.

When he traipsed into the kitchen the brothers were both seated at the breakfast bar, stewing in what amounted to a fairly mildly charged silence. He tossed around the idea of asking what they'd talked about, but that would just annoy Dean, and if it was something he needed to know Sam would fill him in later on.

He shifted his weight, rocking ever-so-slightly back and forth on the balls of his feet. He thought on his softly smouldering anger, and on what Crowley had told him, and decided that Dean hadn't yet earned back Harry's tactful consideration.

He stepped forward pointedly, drawing their attention, and threw caution to the wind.

"So, word on the street is you were touched by an angel."

Dean flinched, and his hand automatically crept up to clutch at his shirtsleeve. Harry's jaw dropped in stunned surprise, cosmic irritation momentarily forgotten, and leaned forward across the counter.

"Wait, seriously? Lemme see!"

Dean glowered at him, angling his torso away from Harry and his curious gaze. Harry wasn't cowed by it – Dean might think he was a master at glaring, but he fell short of the pure venom he was used to receiving for simply existing. In retrospect, it was almost something to thank Snape for – desensitizing him to the pathetic stink-eye of grumpy hunters.

"Don't touch me," Dean bit out, when all Harry did in response was inch a bit further across the counter.

"You can bitch and moan all you want," Harry said with an eye roll, "but I said angel and you freaked out, so whatever you're hiding you have to show me."

"I don't have to show you anything," Dean snapped back.

Harry pushed himself back off the counter and raised his hands in surrender.

"Fine, fine. You don't have to show me, but you do have to show Sam, and he will tell me what he sees, because neither one of us is keen on the idea of this whole mysterious resurrection thing becoming a wide-spread phenomenon that we have to go out and squash. Understand?"

The oldest Winchester grumbled something uncomplimentary under his breath, but most of the fight drained from his posture. At a pleading look from Sam, he reluctantly rolled up his sleeve. Harry leaned forward again to get a better look, but made an obvious show of keeping his hands to himself.

On Dean's upper arm was a handprint, painfully red in appearance. It looked both new and ancient, and a shared glance with Sam confirmed that no, Dean hadn't had any marks or scars that anywhere near resembled it before he died.

"Touched by an angel indeed," Harry murmured, rubbing his chin in thought.

"I don't get why you're yammering on about angels," Dean said, obviously sulking as he rolled his sleeve back down over the handprint. "Yeah, I got that weird mark now, and I don't know how it got there – or how you even knew about it – but seriously? Angels? That's crazy talk."

Stunned, Harry raised an eyebrow in surprise. That surprise doubled when Sam also turned to him in question.

"Really? You've been fighting demons, knowingly or not, basically your entire lives, but angels is where you draw the line?" Mentioning the fact that until less than thirty minutes ago the thought had never even crossed his own mind seemed like a bad idea, so he kept that particular fact to himself. Besides, he hadn't thrown a fuss when the idea was brought to his attention, so even if it was his first time considering the possibility at least he hadn't dismissed it out of hand like the two brothers were.

Sam offered up a slightly awkward shrug. "It's just… demons make sense, you know? You look at humanity, and you look at demons, and their influence on earth sort of feels like a fact that people should've figured out sooner."

"Exactly," Dean butted in. "Demons are shitty and humanity is kinda shitty too. Two and two makes four and all that. But if angels are real then why isn't the world a better place?"

Harry blinked, rolled the thought about in his mind, cringed at how true it rang with his own thoughts from after the phone call, and shrugged. "Point. But they are the reason you're sitting in my kitchen right now, so I wouldn't be so heavy on the insults if I were you. Since we don't know why they did it or what might make them change their mind."

"Please don't antagonise the angels," Sam added sharply, a fierce look in his eyes. "Whether we want to believe in them or not, Harry brought them up for a reason, and we don't know a thing about them. I'm not letting you accidentally talk your way back into Hell when I just got you back."

Dean's eye twitched. Sam's words were probably too much of a declaration of affection for Dean's liking, but even he could tell that this wasn't a good time for their usual sort of dismissive jokes.

Sam shifted his attention back to Harry. "So, what do we know?"

"Ah, yes, well." Harry cleared his throat. "Basically? Nothing. All I know is that apparently retrieving a soul from Hell is incredibly risky, and, you know, no mere mortal soul is worth the hassle, so… Congratulations Dean, you're officially a person of interest. But no one knows why. So we have to figure that one out on our own."

"Well that's just fan-fucking-tastic." Dean slammed his fist on the counter so hard Harry almost imagined he could feel the vibration as it raced across the floor. The only indication Dean gave that it might have hurt was the tense set of his jaw, but since he'd been like that almost constantly since Harry came back into the kitchen it wasn't exactly a helpful measure. If this were a less earth-shattering sort of conversation, Harry might have made a comment about his temper, but he wasn't that stupid.

"Calm down Dean." Eyeing Dean's clenched fist with some concern Sam tried to bring them back on track. "How are we supposed to investigate when we have nothing to go on?"

"Wouldn't it be great if we could just, you know, ask?"

Both brothers stared blankly at him.

"Ask who?"

"Oh, I don't know, the culprit maybe?" With a sigh Harry turned away and started to make himself some coffee. It was going to be a long day. "Surely if we went right to the source we could get some answers."

"Torture then?"

Harry cast a penetrating stare back over his shoulder at Dean's tone. It didn't sound… eager, just… certain. Like that was the obvious answer and they should get right onto it. Sam didn't appear to have noticed, still too caught up in staring side-long at his once-dead brother to be keeping an ear out for tonal shifts.

"You can't torture someone who isn't here," he replied, instead of bringing it up or dismissing the idea out of hand.

"Can't ask questions either," Dean shot back.

"Touché," he allowed with a shrug. "Theoretically, getting into contact would be pretty simple. If religion knows what it's talking about at all, then supposedly angels keep an ear out for prayers, right?"

"So what, we just pray?" Dean's tone was rightfully doubtful. It seemed like an absurdly simple solution to a problem, and anything simple in their line of work usually spelt trouble somewhere underneath.

"We could send up a generic prayer, sure. But that would just go everywhere, and how would we know if it reached the one angel we actually need to talk to? We don't know the situation. It could be an act of rebellion. Screaming our location out to them might bring judgment down upon us. And that would be rather a bad show since you just made it back to the world of the living."

"So we need to narrow it down," Sam supplied. He accepted the mug Harry handed him with a grateful smile, fingers brushing lingeringly as the cup changed hands. Dean watched the motion closely, his expression unreadable. Harry ignored his gaze as he sat another cup on the counter in front of Dean, before leaning back against the fridge with a cup of his own.

"Correct. My intel's all third-hand, rumour-mongering stuff, but no one seems to know anything specific, identity-wise. That might make things difficult." Harry took a long sip of coffee as he thought over his next request. "Dean, did anything strange happen to you between waking and me picking you up?"

Dean's hands were wrapped loosely around the steaming mug, but he wasn't drinking. Instead, he frowned down into the liquid, eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"Strange not including waking up in a coffin?"

Sam made a vaguely distressed noise at the reminder. Harry pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Yes, besides that."

"Well, the clearing looked like a damn bomb site. Dunno what it looked like beforehand but I'm pretty sure those trees were probably upright at some point."

"It must have been from the impact. Maybe they needed your body to pinpoint your soul?" Harry shook his head, not truly looking for answers, and gestured for Dean to continue.

"Right. After that though, when I stumbled upon that old gas station, I went inside. The place was empty, no one around. I was grabbing some change to use the phone to call Sam but then this… noise just filled the place. It was piercing, too high and way too loud for human ears. The windows shattered. Didn't you see the place?"

"I did. I'd just figured it was an abandoned gas station, broken with age, but it seems that wasn't the case. Has that happened again since?"

Dean snorted darkly. "Trust me, you'd have noticed if it had."

Okay, he conceded silently, fair point. But it never hurt to have verbal confirmation. Besides, if it had happened again but he and Sam hadn't noticed it, that would have still been useful information. Any information was useful information at this point.

"Okay, so while that could have been a totally unrelated coincidentally timed incident, I'm sure I'd be right in assuming that not a single person here believes in that possibility. Which means the glass-shattering frequencies and the blast-site in the clearing are both more than likely related to the angels. So… approach with caution?"

"How about just plain Do Not Approach?" Sam offered weakly, knowing he would immediately be shut down.

"Not a chance Sammy. Either we go to them or they eventually come to us, and I'd rather set the time and place."

They lapsed into a frustrated silence.

With so very little to go off of – essentially nothing really – it was going to be a bit harder to come up with a plan of action than they'd like. Harry still had plenty of contacts in hunting circles, but Harry had always been the research guy in those relationships. Hunters weren't dumb by any stretch of the imagination, but the things they knew best were the things they'd encountered in person. Given what Crowley had said, it was highly unlikely that any living hunter had ever knowingly come into contact with an angel – they would be no help here, and asking for advice would only spread rumours across the country, which they could really do without for the time being.

He didn't want to rope Ellen into anything potentially dangerous, even if she had more contacts than he did. But that still left one person they could turn to.

"Sam, could you call Bobby?"

Sam blinked bemusedly at the sudden change of subject.

"Yes, but why? It's not like you don't have his number."

"That is true, and while I do need to talk to him, it'd be best to fill him in on the whole, well, situation first. He'd take it a lot better from you than from me, no doubt."

Sam let out a soft "oh" of realisation and glanced at Dean again. He stood from the breakfast bar, but hovered uncertainly, unwilling to leave but determined to get any answers they could.

Harry smiled softly. "Call him upstairs. Dean and I'll still be here – and in one piece – when you get back. Promise."

With a decisive nod Sam picked up his half-full mug and left the room.

Harry sipped calmly at his slowly-cooling coffee and listened to the sound of Sam's feet on the stairs. Only once he heard the bedroom door swing shut did he put his cup down and shift his attention to the man sitting in front of him.

Their eyes met in the quiet of Sam's departure. Harry folded his arms loosely across his stomach. It was obvious Dean had something on his mind; briefly Harry considered waiting him out, letting the silence nudge him into speaking. Instead he cleared his throat and opened his mouth.

"I'm not going to pry about what you and Sam discussed. Not only is that your business but I just know it'll be like pulling teeth with you. But you clearly have something you want to say to me. Go ahead. As long as you don't start yelling Sam can't hear you from upstairs."

At first he thought Dean was going to hold his silence. Then his fingers twitched around porcelain – the liquid inside still untouched – and a little bit of the fight eased from his body.

"Sammy told me you two are…" he lifted one hand from the mug and twirled it uselessly in the air.

Harry's lips curled in amusement. "Dating?"

Dean frowned, but sighed and shook himself. "Yeah. That." He rubbed a hand restlessly through his hair. "Guess I always knew you were weirdly loyal to him – what kind of idiot tries to trade his life for someone else's when they aren't even related? It didn't work, but that's beside the point. I just never thought it would end up, well, here."

"Is this going to be a problem for you Dean?"

"Don't put words in my mouth," he growled back, but it was more tired than angry. "It's not a problem, it's just… unexpected. Maybe it wasn't sudden for you but this is all very sudden for me. And Sammy never even told me he liked guys, how was I supposed to see this coming? He had a fiancée you know."

"I'm aware."

"Kid was a real mess when she died, so I guess I should just be happy he's finally moving on. Was starting to think he might never get there. I'm not thrilled that it's with you, but at least I know you're willing to die for him. That you're not breakable. But," he jabbed a finger aggressively in Harry's direction. "If you break my little brother's heart, that's it. You're gone. Forever. Capiche?"

Harry's smile turned a shade wistful. He hid it behind the rim of his cup.

"Never thought I'd be getting the shovel talk from you." They both chose to ignore the depressing reality of why that was.

"Yeah, well, being able to wiggle your fingers and make someone invisible doesn't mean I can't take you in a fight."

Well aware that Dean was the far superior hand-to-hand fighter but unwilling to voice the thought Harry simply shrugged one shoulder.

"Can I ask you an invasive personal question? You don't have to answer it."

Dean glowered a little but didn't voice a protest.

"Do you remember anything from your time in Hell?"

Harry watched Dean closely as he voiced the question. Sam might not have noticed, too close to the matter, but Dean had that same mild twitchiness about him now that he'd had back when he first started having hallucinations about the hellhounds.

Dean's expression, though hardly open beforehand, immediately closed off. He wouldn't look directly at Harry.

"No," he shot back in answer, voice cold as ice and void of emotion. "Not a thing."

Harry hummed in acknowledgment and turned his back on the hunter to give him a moment to collect himself. He rinsed his cup out in the sink and listened for movement from upstairs. There hadn't been any raised voices, but even if Bobby was pissed Sam wasn't likely to shout back – while it was considerate it also made it hard to judge how well the conversation was going, and to guess if he needed to be on the defensive or not when it was his turn.

oOoOo

Harry had drifted into the living room and plucked a book off the shelves at random to browse for a bit by the time Sam came back downstairs. Dean was still by the breakfast bar, but he'd spun about in his seat to keep Harry in his line of vision instead of in his blind spot. No matter how adamantly he denied having any memory of his time in Hell, Harry got the feeling that Dean wouldn't be comfortable with people standing where he couldn't see them for a long time to come.

(Dean would definitely throw a punch if he so much as breathed an allusion to the phrase post-traumatic stress, but Harry was just calling it like he saw it. Merlin knows the man had been through more than enough shit to qualify.)

So that was how Sam found them: Dean brooding at the counter and Harry staring absently at a page halfway through a book on demonology while curled up in an armchair.

Harry didn't actually notice his return until his feet came into his line of sight, less because he'd been engrossed in what he was reading and more because he was just lost in thought, trying to ignore the weight in Dean's persistent gaze.

"Bobby's willing to talk to you now," Sam informed him, holding out his phone over the thick book.

Harry glanced up as he accepted it. Sam's face was a shade paler than usual, and if Harry squinted he could see a red tinge to his eyes. He didn't ask how the talk had gone.

Closing the book and straightening up in the chair, Harry rested the phone on the arm and put it on speaker. There was no need to try and keep the conversation private – he was only here to ask for information.

"Heya Bobby,"

"Kid."

Harry smiled wryly. Nothing like being comatose in a guy's house and then revealing the existence of another sort of magic to form a weird bond with someone.

"Listen, this might sound a little odd, but can you think of any ways to ascertain a being's identity without actually being in contact with them?"

The static hum of an open phone line crackled in the quiet as his question sunk in.

Bobby let out a heavy sigh. "Straight back into hunting without so much as a how-do-you-do. You're turning into a right Winchester yourself."

Since Harry wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult he let it pass without comment.

"I know a psychic y'all could get in touch with. Best damn psychic in the country, if you ask me. I don't know if she'll get you what you want, but she'll try everything she knows. That's about the only thing I can think of off the top of my head."

"Is that agreeable?" Harry asked, speaking to both brothers, but mostly to Dean.

"At this point I'm willing to try pretty much anything," Dean admitted gruffly.

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. It was one thing to be told Dean was back, another to hear his voice, and it would be something else entirely when Bobby first got to see him with his own eyes.

"Send us her details and we'll look into it," Harry requested, tactfully not acknowledging Bobby's emotional state.

"I'll send you her address and meet you there. I'm not leaving you idjits to do this on your own again, not while I'm still fighting fit."

And honestly, Harry should have seen that one coming from a mile away. But he didn't have any problems with it – another head and another pair of hands were always welcome when facing the unknown.

"Roger that boss-man." Bobby huffed in exasperation. "We'll see you in a day or two then."

"I'll be waiting."

Harry ended the call and handed the phone back to Sam.

"That's more of a plan than we had five minutes ago. Go team."

Dean snorted an ugly laugh – amused but bitter – and Harry shrugged it off.

"Go have a shower or something," Harry continued, standing up and directing the command to Dean. "You need one and we know you want one. We'll sort out a route and pack or whatever while you're getting cleaned up, and then we can head out."

"I'm driving," Dean interjected, arguing for argument's sake since he couldn't refute the fact that he desperately wanted to properly wash off the graveyard grime that lingered from his coffin nap.

"Never said you weren't." Harry pointed at the kitchen door. "Shower. Go."

He side-eyed Harry for a long moment, but the siren song of hot water and soap was too much to resist for long, and he left without further protest.

oOoOo

By the time Dean finished with his shower and scrounged up some mostly-fitting clothes that were actually in one piece, Sam and Harry had not only mapped out a route to go meet Bobby and his psychic friend but also refilled Dean's beloved car with some of their hunting gear. Almost everything, except for a couple of 'in case of emergency' blades and a couple vials of holy water, had ended up down in the basement with all the rest of their collective hunting supplies once they made the mutual decision to give it all a rest for the time being.

They put back everything they could remember being in the secret trunk compartment, not only because heading out on the road unarmed was just asking for trouble, but because Dean didn't need to glimpse the living proof of exactly how they'd felt about hunting while he'd been gone. They all needed a sense of normalcy for now, however fake, and rocking the boat wasn't worth it.

Dean was just lucky Harry had convinced Sam to keep his stereo mods to Harry's car instead of messing around with Dean's.

"We ready to go or what?" Dean queried the moment he set foot in the kitchen. Not an inch of him had doubted Harry's proclamation that they'd finish up while he was in the bathroom. That, or he was simply antsy to leave. It was a feeling they could all relate to.

"We're good Dean, we're good," Sam assured, gently herding him towards the front door. Harry followed lazily behind them, one hand curled around the strap of his magically-expanded messenger bag, letting a feeling of fondness wash over him as the two brothers bickered softly amongst themselves.

It had been a real roller-coaster sort of day, and it was barely lunchtime.

Harry schooled his expression as he locked the door behind him.

Someone was watching him.

This was not an uncommon occurrence. It had begun a little over a month ago, and didn't seem likely to cease any time soon. Harry had never been able to pinpoint the actual physical entity engaged in their observation, but he'd become familiar with their dark, non-human presence – an easy feat as they, perhaps smugly (though seemingly well within their right to be as such), made no attempt at masking their presence.

Sam was still blissfully unaware of the semi-recent development, as Harry had refused to bring it up without anything substantial to even pick out if they were malevolent or benign, and he didn't appear to have noticed anything out of the ordinary himself. Whatever his demon-given sensitivities were, this was not one of them.

As for Dean – he glanced over his shoulder to where Dean was carefully inspecting his car – it was too hard to tell if the tense line of his shoulders and the way he twitched ever so slightly at unexpected movement was a hangover from his extremely recent escape from torture and imprisonment, or if he too could sense their watcher. Perhaps it was both. He wouldn't ask, and Dean wouldn't say unless he was certain it was real and not a phantom, lingering sense of paranoia and panic.

Harry reached out with his senses as he traipsed over to the car, trying once more in vain to determine who the feeling was coming from. There was a man walking his dog, a woman going for a run, and some lawn-care professional was parked a few houses up the street – and that wasn't even taking into account the people who lived on the street, or potential visiting relatives or new renters.

The longer he was exposed to it the more Harry was sure that the presence felt demonic, except previous experience had shown that if there was only one or two demons about, he could generally identify the demons if he got close enough. This was demonic but not, with an aura that radiated out over a large area without a noticeable centre.

The only bright side to the whole affair was that whatever it was, whoever they were, they seemed content in their observation.

At least for now.

The uncertainty of what might happen when they changed their minds lingered as Harry climbed into the backseat and Dean turned on the engine.

Only time would tell.

oOoOo

The journey out to the psychic's place was a long one – not the longest Harry had ever pulled, with or without the Winchesters, but long enough to be uncomfortable. Long enough to wish he knew the proper technique for apparation, or at least a method that worked less chaotically with the way his magic ebbed and flowed these days beneath his skin, untethered by a wand and without proper direction.

Dean was toeing the speed limit the entire way, and wasn't keen on stopping; it took a group effort just to get him to stop for dinner, and they wouldn't let him back in the car afterwards, opting to spend the night in a motel instead.

"Even if we do make it sometime today," Sam had said, "it'll be pretty late, and we'd just be making a nuisance of ourselves. Sleep. We'll get there tomorrow."

Harry wasn't convinced Dean actually got any sleep, but at least he didn't take off without them in the middle of the night.

And so, after a cheap and greasy breakfast at a nearby diner, they finished the last leg of their journey with only Dean's cassettes blasting loudly inside the car to cover the nervous, anticipatory tension that hung between them.

oOoOo

Bobby was waiting for them when they arrived. He looked a little like he hadn't slept, but he always looked like that to Harry, and it was hard to tell if it was just the lifestyle taking its toll on the older man or if he was actually losing sleep.

While Dean didn't think twice about getting straight out of the car, part of Harry wanted to hang back awhile, so as not to interrupt if Bobby decided he had a thing or two he needed to say. He'd awkwardly third-wheeled enough familial dressing-downs in the Weasley household to know that he'd rather avoid them if at all possible.

Sam didn't seem to share his concern, coaxing him out of the car with a look and a tilt of his head, and he turned out to be right not to worry; all Bobby did was wrap Dean up in an impressive bear hug and pat him on the shoulder before getting straight down to business.

"It's good to see you boys in one piece," Bobby called in greeting when Harry and Sam stepped over towards him and Dean.

"Same to you old man," Harry returned, only to be cuffed upside the head by Sam. He shot him a disgruntled look, but Sam was laughing quietly, so he just rolled his eyes and continued on. "This the place then?"

Bobby nodded without offering up any further explanation, then turned to knock on the front door.

The door swung wide open after maybe twenty seconds, revealing a woman in a dark tank and faded jeans. She appeared older than Harry and the Winchesters, but younger than Bobby.

Harry had never met a psychic before, only the barely legitimate seer Sybil Trelawney, but he was thankful to see that she seemed far more normal than his old divination professor – the lack of shawls and beads was really a breath of fresh air. Not to mention the literal fresh air he could sense from her house, which wasn't suffocated with a dozen different types of incense.

"Bobby!" the woman cried, wrapping the old hunter up in a surprisingly strong hug. She turned to them once she released Bobby and offered a slightly predatory grin. "And these must be the Winchesters? Could've sworn there was only two of them though. But the more the merrier."

Harry flushed uncomfortably under the heat of her gaze and cleared his throat.

"Boys, this is Pamela Barnes. Pamela, this here's Sam and Dean, and the scruffy one is Harry Peverell."

"Not a Winchester then. A friend?"

Dean snorted. "Hardly. Them two're lovebirds."

Inwardly Harry despaired. Dean had gone straight from confused anger to shovel talks to 'affectionate' teasing. He wasn't sure which end of the spectrum was worse.

"A shame," Pamela offered with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. "You're unattached though, right tiger?" She winked at Dean and his entire countenance lit up.

Of course he would let his libido win out over his other emotions.

"Can we go inside?" Harry asked abruptly, interrupting their little moment or whatever uncomfortably charged thing was happening right in front of him. "We should talk business first, right?"

"Ah, yes." Pamela clapped her hands together and turned back towards the house. "Business before pleasure, of course. Come in."

She led them through the house and into an oddly decorated sitting room. It had a very occult vibe to it – it must have been her primary base of operations for whatever she needed to do to utilise her abilities.

"Now, Bobby here said you boys were looking for something. I tried a few less involved rituals after he called, but I couldn't find anything. So, how do you lot feel about a séance?"

Harry had absolutely no idea what that entailed, but Bobby trusted her so it couldn't be anything too bad. Still.

"Is it all right if I lay down some ground rules first?"

Pamela glanced at him, gaze calculating.

"That depends, what for?"

"Safety. Likely yours more so than ours." She looked a little offended, but Harry held up a hand to stave off any protests. "I don't doubt your skill in what you do. Could you hear me out?"

"Fine, I'm listening."

"Thank you. First off, we already know what we're looking for. We don't need to know where they are or what they look like – we only need their name. Secondly, there is a chance they may notice you searching for them. If they offer warnings or urge you away, please listen. We don't want to anger them, and we also don't want to put you in unnecessary danger. Remember, all we need is a name. Are those acceptable parameters?"

Pamela studied them each in turn, taking in the seriousness of the situation.

"Well that was vague and mysterious. But yes, I agree to your terms." She then went about setting up for the séance.

A séance turned out to be a much tamer affair than Harry was expecting after Pamela had referred to it as an involved ritual. They all sat around the circular table in the middle of the room and held hands. Pamela was using the fiery handprint on Dean's arm as an anchor point or locator beacon for the ritual, her own hand stretched over the raw-looking skin.

What surprised Harry the most was that when Pamela invoked the ritual she did it in English. Perhaps his time both in the wizarding world and the time spent exorcising demons had tinged his worldview, but he'd almost come to simply expect anything even mildly occultist to wind up in Latin.

(But it was ridiculous to expect a person to learn Latin just because they had latent psychic powers, wasn't it?)

With his eyes obediently closed Harry could only hear Pamela's voice and the soft breaths of everyone in the room. Bobby's hand was loose in his right and Sam's tight in his left.

If someone had sat him down in front of a muggle psychic ten years ago and told him to participate in a séance, he would've been out of there in a flash. But time and distance and experience had all lent themselves to him so that he had come to learn to trust magic and powers different to those he'd come to accept as the one and only reality.

Harry wasn't parsing the words Pamela said, instead listening to her tone of voice. She did grow tense and wary after a few minutes, but before he made himself speak up to remind her to be careful she ended the séance.

With eyes open and hands to themselves the quartet watched Pamela watch them as she mulled over whatever she had seen or heard or felt.

"Something tells me I don't want to know what you boys are getting involved with," she said eventually, a rueful statement on a soft exhale. "Castiel. That's who you're looking for."

A name. They had a name. For once step one of a plan involving the Winchesters had gone off without a hitch.

"Thank you," Sam said, voice heavy with meaning, while Harry was lost somewhere between triumph and a sense of unease.

Pamela waved off his thanks with a smile. "Don't worry about it. Just be careful out there."

"We will."

Pamela muttered something about water and briefly left the room. In her absence Sam turned to his brother with a teasing half-smirk.

"If you want a little alone time with her we can always leave without you."

For a moment Dean looked sorely tempted; then he punched Sam in the arm and climbed to his feet.

"Like hell, we've got an angel to gank."

"Interrogate, Dean," Harry corrected. "We've got an angel to interrogate."

"Sure, whatever, same thing."