CHAPTER ONE: HOMECOMING
"So, how did you find me, anyway? I don't exactly advertise in the Yellow Pages."
When no reply was immediately forthcoming, Harry hesitated over the packet of ready salted peanuts he'd been warring against, and glanced to his right. Dean wasn't even looking at him, far too busy gouging his own fingerprints into his armrest to pay attention to little things like sudden conversation, but Sam was. And he looked downright shifty.
Harry felt his lips tighten, thinning out into a severe slash of colour that would have done McGonagall proud. "Don't worry," he said darkly, "I'm certainly not jumping to any unfavourable conclusions or anything."
All things considered, Harry decided to put down the peanuts.
Sam recovered surprisingly quickly, so fast that Harry didn't even see the cogs turning. But it was all just a little too late; Harry didn't buy it for one moment when Sam shrugged easily and said, "My vision…"
It had been a tight squeeze fitting comfortably into their assigned row, broad shoulders and lanky frames making it difficult; even Harry, easily the shortest of the three men, felt short-changed by just how little he could stretch his legs out in the confined space. Packed like sardines would've been an apt analogy, Harry thought, deciding that being able to feel Sam's breath brush hotly against his cheek when he spoke definitely counted as an unavoidable invasion of personal space.
Harry snorted. "Oh, c'mon," he said, feeling distinctly uncharitable, "we both know that it wasn't the vision."
Dean hacked out a decidedly unhappy laugh. "Oh, right," he drawled, still staring straight ahead and still clinging to his armrests like life itself depended on it, "we're all on the same frickin' page alright."
Harry blinked, filed the comment away for later analysis, and then switched his attention back to Sam, who looked a little sheepish.
"We didn't stalk you or anything," Sam said, apparently smart enough to realise when he'd been well and truly rumbled. Harry blinked, and then smirked in amusement. That hadn't exactly been where his head had been, but judging from the awkwardness on Sam's face, the other man wasn't thinking of anything worse - stalking someone was clearly the pinnacle of evil according to Sam Winchester. Harry quirked a single eyebrow, and Sam rushed to add, "Well, okay, so there might have been a little stalking. A very limited amount of stalking. I…" Sam chuckled uneasily, "you're a tricky man to track down, you know that?"
"Hmm," Harry said, picking up his peanuts and inspecting the rather abused vacuum seal. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dean recover from a particularly rough patch of turbulence and shoot Sam a chagrined glare. Sam's shaggy head of hair - still nothing compared to the Potter trademarked mop that Harry sported - shook in response, and Harry was quite sure that the younger brother was mouthing something to the eldest. Unless Dean's eyes were zeroing in on Sam's lips for another reason, of course.
Harry snorted again and turned his attention out of the window, unconcerned with the exchange going on beside him. They'd been in the air for a few hours now, and all that Harry could see from his - much fought over and coveted - window seat was a thin layer of wispy cloud obstructing any view he might have had of the Atlantic ocean. Finding no entertainment from that quarter, and long since having grown bored of the inflight movie - hence talking to Sam in the first place - Harry sighed.
It was going to be a long flight.
"Har--er, Mr. Potter?"
Harry grimaced at the title, half-feeling like Voldemort was about to jump forward from the seat behind and yell 'aha!'. When nothing happened, and really nothing had ever been about to, Harry looked back over at the Winchester brothers and raised a brow in question.
Sam continued, "Maybe you could clarify a few things for us. About, y'know, that new fantasy novel that you're writing?" Fantasy novel--? Sam glanced around the cabin with just enough unease for Harry to catch on. Oh. That fantasy novel.
"What do you want to know?" Harry asked, swallowing back a lump in his throat and trying to repress the tight feeling of distrust constricting his ribcage. If it had been anyone else, there wouldn't have even been an issue - he'd have whacked them upside the head with the butt of his Wilson and then burnt rubber getting out of there before they woke up and started asking more questions. But the Winchesters - well, besides being stuck on a transatlantic flight with the two of them and having absolutely no where to burn rubber to, they were putting themselves out to save the people he loved…had loved. Once. They were risking their lives for a society they shouldn't have known about let alone be willing to die for. Harry didn't want them to die doing what should've been his job. So they needed to know, as much as he could tell them that might make them understand how scared shitless they should be right now. Didn't mean he was happy about it.
"Anything you can tell us," Sam said, "it all sounds so…original."
"Yeah," was Dean's input, still tense and sarcastic, "the boy's going to win a Pulitzer."
"I'd start from the beginning," Harry said, ignoring Dean entirely, "but that's a lot of ground to cover. Like Merlin and Camelot type mileage. Plus," Harry rolled his eyes a fraction to the right, "it'll ruin the plot." He shrugged, "I guess the best place to start from is a thousand years or so ago, back in the time of the Four Founders."
"The dudes who signed the Declaration of Independence?" Dean blurted.
"Those were the Founding Fathers, Dean," Sam said, looking appalled at the lack of attention Dean had paid to History class. Or maybe just school in general.
"…I knew that."
"Anyway, these guys were definitely British. Also not all 'fathers'," Harry said. Dean's expression turned slightly sour at the reminder that he was sharing this plane with more than just his brother, but Sam looked plenty happy at the prospect of furthering his knowledge of the wizarding world. Determined to keep the illusion of being a fledgling author and at least pretend to be conforming to the Statute of Secrecy, Harry added, "though I could tweak things around a little, maybe. Make one of them American…maybe it'd give the book a more PC, multicultural feel, what do you think?"
"I think you're probably fine," Sam said, wryly. "What else is there?"
"Well, they were…they were wizards. The greatest and most brilliant of their generation, though each as different to the others as the Sun to the Moon. There was Ravenclaw, fiercely intelligent and thirsting for knowledge; Hufflepuff, hard-working and loyal; Gryffindor, chivalrous and brave; and Slytherin, who was…he was cunning and ambitious. When they built the school - er, Hogwarts, they built Hogwarts, a place where little witches and wizards could grow up to be big witches and big wizards without worry of scared Muggles or bursts of wild magic - well, when they built the place, they gave it four Houses: Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor and Slytherin."
"An eagle, a badger, a lion, and a snake," Sam said, voice tinged with dawning realisation.
Harry blinked. "Your--"
"Vision. Yeah," Sam confirmed quietly.
Apparently sensing the need for a distraction of sorts, Dean started to loudly make a fuss over the latest bout of turbulence. "--And where'd this damn pilot get his license, anyway, Wacky Races?--"
"What did you see, exactly?" Harry asked, as everyone within earshot focused all of their attention on the loud man mouthing off in seat 28C, and not the seemingly casual conversation going on next to him.
"Just…feelings. Thoughts. Awareness of things," Sam said. Harry narrowed his eyes a fraction of an inch, having detected Sam's initial hesitance. However, it was a pause that was easily explained away - Sam might've never told anyone but his brother before, and it had been a personal question with an answer perhaps not simply worded - and Harry ignored it. "I saw that man, that monster…what did you call him?"
"--please tell me he has a license--"
"Voldemort," Harry supplied, feeling like he'd choke on the name. He didn't, of course; he wouldn't give that bastard the satisfaction.
"Flight from death," Sam said, "of course. Clever."
"--brother's at Stanford Law. He has connections--"
Harry grunted. "Remarkable, really," he said grudgingly, "especially since it's all just an anagram." He caught the bemused look that flitted across Sam's face and added, "Oh, yeah, lot of literary coincidences going on in the wizarding world. Alliteration…clever little anagrams…Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore being called, well, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Did you know that Albus Dumbledore means 'white hat'? Funny, the leader of the Order being ca--" Harry abruptly snapped his mouth shut, before glancing sideways at Sam. "What else did you see?"
"--Sir, if you'd please calm down. You're disturbing the other--"
"Just that, really," Sam said. Harry looked at him, and Sam looked back, one aware that the other was telling a half-truth, and the other aware that the other knew.
Finally, Harry sighed. "I'm going to call you on that one day, you know," he said, "but probably not today." He angled a glance at Dean, who'd taken one look at the somewhat pug-faced air stewardess - kind of reminded Harry of Pansy Parkinson, actually - and started to complain with renewed enthusiasm. He was in the middle of a rant about parachutes and the lifeboat to passenger ratio on the Titanic, a note of hysteria in his voice that Harry didn't think was faked, when Harry cleared his throat and said pointedly, "So, back to my fictional story of…er, fiction."
"Right," Dean said, before turning a charming grin on the stewardess, "whatever you say, ma'am."
The air stewardess' unimpressed glare slowly thawed. "Yes, well," she said, lips twitching upwards slightly when Dean plastered an innocent expression on his face, "can I get you anything, sir?"
Immediately spotting the look that flashed across Dean's face, and already sick of the flirting, Harry leaned across Sam and smiled his own, award-winning might he add, grin at the woman. The moment he had her attention he winked, and said, "Not just now, love. Thanks."
Her reaction was all the proof Harry needed that women loved an accent; having slipped back into an English drawl that wouldn't have been out of place in his school days, Harry was rewarded by the blush that spread across the American's cheeks like wild fire in dry bush. Feeling rather self-satisfied when the stewardess giggled slightly, curtsied - of all things, curtsied! - and then walked off, hips swaying rather interestingly, Harry eased back over to his side of the row. He raised a single eyebrow at the amused look on Sam's face, and simply shrugged when he caught Dean's unimpressed stare.
"We don't have a lot of time," he said.
"We have five hours," Dean said.
"Right," Harry said, "exactly."
So he talked. He talked about the war that had raged between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and how Slytherin's own opinions still shaped some purebloods' antiquated views of non-magical anything. He talked about the enchantments cast on Hogwarts that made it the safest building in all of Britain, and completely inaccessible to the uninitiated Muggle. He talked about Tom Riddle, and Horcruxes, and his slow, steady slide towards becoming Lord Voldemort. He talked about Albus Dumbledore, and the Order of the Phoenix, and then he talked about his parents - and the Marauders - and how they'd joined the Order straight out of school. He talked about the prophecy, and the Fidelius charm, and his own birth that July. He talked about Neville Longbottom for longer than was strictly necessary, and suddenly found himself talking about Snape and his journey from first year Slytherin to Order spy. Then he talked about every offensive spell he could think of, not a simple task for the old General of the DA, and once leader of the Order. Eventually, though, he couldn't postpone it any longer, and he talked about Halloween, 1981. He talked about his Hogwarts letter and about realising that he was the Boy-Who-Lived. He talked about Sirius' innocence, and Peter's betrayal, and Voldemort's resurrection, and, finally, he talked about the Battle of Hogwarts.
"So many people died," he said, still staring at the exact same spot of the headrest in front of him as he had been for the past four hours. He felt numb, like his entire body had been submerged in ice water. "I wanted to help -- I could've -- but I had my job to do, and I couldn't afford to become distracted. So I killed him; ripped him into itty, bitty pieces and then tossed each disgusting part of him into a different corner of Hell. Seven pieces, one for each fragment of his soul. I thought it would be enough--I charmed those things so thoroughly that…I'm getting ahead of myself. I killed him, and then I left. I couldn't stay around there anymore. All of the press, all of the attention, everyone just looking at me like they were waiting for me to explode. Or, worse, step up and start doing all of these 'great things' that they were expecting. I couldn't stand it. I wasn't anything special, never have been.
"The US seemed like the right place to go to; I'd heard someone say once how easy it was to get lost there, and that seemed exactly what I needed. So I landed in Chicago, completely lost, a little clueless. Ended up saving a Hunter named Dresden from some demon monkeys, and got myself a crash course in all of the things that go bump in the night. I thought I'd just ignore it all at first -- it wasn't my problem, all I wanted was to be left alone. But I guess my 'hero complex' kicked in. Least, that's what Hermione called it, back when…at any rate, I couldn't just sit there. I'd find myself lying awake in the early hours of the morning, wondering how many people could be needing my help right then. So I decided to Hell with it, maybe I just wasn't cut out for 'normal', you know?
"Probably a good thing I didn't let myself get out of shape, with Voldemort being back and everything." Harry finally tore his eyes away from the specific patch of blue fabric that he'd been dead set on memorising for a long while now, and looked over to the Winchester brothers. Both looked solemn. Harry shrugged, "The rest I think you know."
"That's some story," Dean said at last, his voice gruff. His voice wasn't exactly teasing when he added, "If you expect us to start worshipping you and calling you 'hero' just because you happened to survive puberty--"
"Dean!" Sam said.
"It's okay," Harry said, already standing. He had to duck his head to avoid catching it on the overhead storage compartment, but he didn't care -- he needed out of there before he started doing something he'd regret later. Like cry. "I don't think I'd believe it, either. If you'll excuse me…nature calls."
Harry shuffled past Sam, and then past Dean, 'accidentally' catching the steel-reinforced toe of his boot on the older brother's shin. He flashed a tight-lipped, unenthusiastic smile in what could be loosely termed an apology, and then headed down the narrow aisle towards the bathroom. That was a very loose definition, too; being crammed into a 'room' barely bigger than a coffin wasn't Harry's idea of 'space', but it was better than nothing.
"Could you be any colder towards the guy, Dean?" he heard Sam demand from behind him, obviously believing him to be out of earshot.
"I don't trust him," Dean's voice replied defensively, "and you shouldn't either, Sammy."
Well. At least the feeling was mutual.
Benedict Carlisle eyed the array of detectors in front of him in wary bemusement, his cup of Earl Grey - milk and two sugars - slowly going cold by his elbow. Ever so slowly, the man brought his wand up and tentatively tapped the alarm's glass-casing. Nothing changed -- the alarm in question continued to flash, illuminating the concrete wall behind it in a sickly blood red.
"Oh dear," he said, rising from his chair and feeling every one of his sixty-five years. "Oh dear, oh dear." His voice seemed to echo, even in the small, grey bunker he'd been assigned to; incongruously, the alarm made no sound. The whirring noise in Benedict's head was simply the sound of his panicked heart pushing his blood through his veins.
What was he to do? The alarm housed on level 42 of the Watch Tower was of great importance, both to You-Know-Who and everyone else. For the good of his station as a Death Eater - and the title left a bitter taste in his mouth even after all of this time - he should owl You-Know-Who immediately. For the good of the rest of the country, he should keep it to himself. Benedict hadn't chosen to become a Death Eater, not truly. But his entire family had been enslaved in the camps, and the sickness that had twined itself around his little, baby granddaughter had been terrifying in its gravity.
Had he been younger, the romantic lure of defying You-Know-Who and joining the resistance would have been impossible to deny, but Benedict was sixty-five, and his family only lived at the sufferance of You-Know-Who himself. What was he to do?
It was an example of the sod's law that the Universe is so famed for that one of his colleagues chose just then to knock on the door.
"Y-yes?" Benedict called out tremulously.
"Hey, Benny," a voice said. A second later, the door swung open. A tall, robust sort of youth was standing in the door way, his neatly combed hair a scant inch away from tickling the frame. "How're y--oh. Oh, dear."
Benedict had relaxed the moment he'd recognised the younger man's voice, but now he snorted. "Quite so. You took the words right out of my mouth, dear boy."
"I suppose we have to tell him? The Dark Lord will want to know."
"I suppose so, yes. Oh, dear. I can never quite remember just what that particular alarm means." This was a complete and utter lie, of course. Even people who had never set foot inside the Watch Tower knew of the big, red alarm on Floor 42, and everyone in the Dark Lord's service knew what it had been calibrated for. Not daring to meet the boy's eyes, Benedict began searching for a scrap of parchment and a quill.
However, the brown-haired youth didn't seem to care about the lie. He was staring at the flashing alarm with an inscrutable look on his face, and he didn't take his gaze away from it even when he spoke.
"So, Harry Potter's returned to Britain after all."
The first splash of ice water on his face almost stung, the cold was so biting. However, by the third sluice of freezing water, his skin had acclimated, and he no longer had to suck in a breath every time he splashed the tap water onto his face. Slumped over the shallow basin in the airplane's bathroom, Harry finally twisted the faucet tightly closed and watched the water swirl down the drain. Fingers still dripping, and face still slick, Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and then raked his right hand through his already rather tousled hair.
When he finally looked up, the sight that met him in the narrow mirror almost made him take a step back.
The man peering back at him looked tired, drained; there was the slightest discolouration under his eyes that spoke of insomnia and sleepless nights spent hunting ghouls, and his eyes themselves didn't shine anymore. Harry didn't think that was because of the blue-tinted contacts he was using as disguise. Rather, he'd simply seen too many things and done far too much more for his eyes to be mistaken for young. There was a hardness there now that there hadn't been before -- he'd been determined but scared all throughout his teenage years, and just plain broken in his early twenties. Before even that, he'd been frustratingly young, unable to understand why Aunt Petunia didn't bake him fairy cakes, why Uncle Vernon didn't teach him how to ride a bike with only two wheels. Now, the milestone of his thirtieth birthday looming just over a year away, his eyes were a molten, emerald steel.
Harry snorted, and looked away from the mirror, turning his entire body away from it when his peripheral vision proved too accurate. "What doesn't kill you," he muttered bitterly.
Reliving his past had been difficult, and that statement alone was worthy of nomination for understatement of the year. In fact, Harry felt terrible -- he was slightly nauseous, like all of his internal organs were trying to escape by way of lurching up through his throat and abandoning ship; his head was pounding in time to his heart beat; and his skin felt too tight, something that the cold water had only exacerbated.
All told, he was no where near ready for the 'seatbelt' sign overhead to switch on with a high-pitched 'DING!'.
Harry groaned, but breathed in deeply none-the-less. He got himself under control and his game face on in less than three seconds. A split second later, he'd flicked the catch free, opened the door, and stepped out into the belly proper of the commercial airplane. It took exactly twenty-three somewhat stunted strides to reach row 28 - Harry counted - and then another eight seconds to get to his seat without having to actually say anything.
He snapped the two ends of his seatbelt together and stubbornly ignored the way that Dean was stubbornly ignoring him.
"So, er, how does it feel to be nearly home?" Sam asked after a moment. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry noted that Sam had turned his back on Dean as much as he could in the cramped space. Clearly a case of 'if you can't say anything nice, I'm going to ignore you until you get a clue'. It made Harry think of Ron and Hermione, and did not help with his stomach ache.
"It's a lot like sea sickness," Harry said. He decided that he wasn't even going to touch the 'home' issue; Britain hadn't been home in years. Home was Chicago…or had been until that ill-fated hunt in Texas. Then wham, bam, thank you ma'am, here Harry was, on a British Airways flight to Hell. He supposed Chicago wasn't home anymore now, either. Somehow he couldn't see himself going back. And he didn't want to think about what that said about what he'd been doing there for the last ten years. Probably nothing good.
Sam chuckled, "Man, I know that feeling."
Harry very much doubted it, but he kept his mouth shut. You just couldn't tell with some people, and Harry knew a very limited amount about the Winchesters anyway. The last thing he wanted to do was to insult some Oliver Twist type by insisting they'd lived a life of relative luxury and never felt the cold, squelchy, 'I want to get off the world' feeling that currently had Harry so ensnared. Instead he smiled tightly and said, "Yeah. It's a doozy."
Further conversation was sparse, consisting mostly of unnecessary repetitions of things already said, until the plane touched down -- on British soil, Jesus, Harry was going to be sick -- and they off-loaded.
They'd barely gotten ten steps off of the plane, Harry taking point as they crossed over the passenger gateway that had docked between the plane and the airport proper, before all three noticed an almost suffocating sense of wrongness.
"Is anyone else's spidey sense tingling?" Dean asked, voice hushed as he eyed two security guards watching the procession of passengers disembark from the plane.
"Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, alright," Sam agreed quietly, drawing a bemused look from his brother and a confirming nod from Harry. "Just try to…blend in."
"Easy for you to say, college boy," Dean shot back, glancing pointedly down at his attire, and then at Harry's. Both Harry and Dean were dressed in surprisingly similar wardrobes: biker boots, leather jackets, and wornout blue jeans. The only differences were barely worth mentioning -- Harry's jacket was black, not brown, he wasn't wearing flannel, and the pendant around his neck was more than just a trinket with sentimental value, but that was all. Compared to Sam in his lightweight jacket, converse sneakers and what looked like brand new jeans, the two stuck out like sore thumbs. Two renegade, rough-and-ready sore thumbs. At the moment, it wasn't the most helpful of looks.
"You ever heard the saying about plain sight?" Sam said, his rejoinder drawing an exasperated sigh from Dean and a slightly worried look from Harry. It wasn't that he didn't think it would work, it was just that…well, alright, he didn't think it would work.
"Nope, never heard it," Dean said belligerently, "did you get some road kill to tell you that one?"
"Just walk, alright?" Harry said, lifting his voice a bit to cut over Sam's reply. They were approaching passport control, swept along by all of the other passengers. While bickering as they moved through the corridors might have been an acceptable method of 'hiding in plain sight', bickering in the queue for passport control would just draw unnecessary attention. Security was beefed up as it was. In fact…
"Merlin," Harry said as they spilled out of the corridor and into a large room dedicated to passport control. "They're not even trying to hide it."
Indeed, they weren't. The walls of the room were lined with masked wizards in full wizard dress, black robes sweeping the floor and drawing startled, bemused glances from some of the Muggles. More masked wizards weaved their way through the room, every so often swooping down on a Muggle and dragging them away from their friends or family like birds of prey singling out unwitting mice.
The Muggles were beginning to realise it -- the odd individual was breaking from the neat queues they'd been shepherded into, and protests were beginning to flare up. 'You can't do this to me--I'm an American!' rang out from somewhere near by, drawing curious glances that didn't last very long. After all, after 9/11 and 7/7, of course security was going to have been increased. As far as the vast majority of the Muggles were concerned, that was all this was. Harry had other ideas.
"Fuck," he said, suddenly getting it in a flash of horrified inspiration. Despite the righteous anger he could feel coiling in his gut, Harry let Sam herd him into one of the queues, and tried his best to keep his head down. "That's what they're doing -- they're culling."
"What?" Sam demanded.
"Picking out the best to serve their Master," Harry said, voice barely a snarl, "that's what's going on here -- why they're still allowing flights into the country. They take the incoming passengers and…well, I don't know. But I bet that when they leave the country they're not the ones in complete control of their faculties."
"Mind control?"
"The Imperious Curse."
"How do you know?" Dean demanded suspiciously.
Harry snorted. "Trust me," he said, "this has 'Voldemort' written all over it." He tried to peer ahead, past the milling crowd and the passport control booths to what was going on beyond it, but there was a wall in the way, and all he could hear was the inane chatter going on around him. "See how calm everyone is? That's part media conditioning, alright, but it's part something else, too, I'll bet. There's probably an enchantment of some sort in the air. A cheering charm, maybe, or even some sort of Muggle repelling charm. Not to turn them away, but to keep them from really seeing what's happening, like a veil."
"Then how come I can see it just fine?" Dean said, the suspicion in his voice plain for all to hear.
"You've just been told what to look for," Harry pointed out, "and you've been trained to recognise the supernatural. Besides, it can't be very strong, otherwise the Muggles wouldn't notice anything. Not even the other Muggles."
"Right," Sam said, "so what are we going to do about it?"
Harry frowned. That was a good question. He'd just opened his mouth to deliver his plan -- guerrilla tactics, distract and ambush -- when Dean cut in, "Nothing. We're going to do nothing." Harry made a wordless noise of protest in the back of his throat, and Dean said, "We have bigger fish to fry here. If we get caught trying to help these people, we can't help anyone else -- and we will be caught. Our first time up against magic, Sammy, with all of our weapons cache back at O'Hare? We'd be caught so fast you wouldn't have time to realise you were doing a damn good impression of a dead guy. Other hand, we help everyone else, kill that son of a bitch, and we also save all of the people here. Course of action seems obvious."
"And morally ambiguous like always," Harry said tiredly. He could see Sam beginning to argue out of the corner of his eye and he said, "He's right. We're woefully outnumbered and inexperienced. Live to fight another day. All that rot." They'd reached the front of the line. "You have your passports, right?" Harry asked as he fished his out of his back pocket.
"Yeah," Sam said as Dean simply saluted with his.
"Alright then," Harry said, stepping up to the booth and smiling rakishly at the woman sat there. "Afternoon, ma'am," he said in an American accent that was far more authentic than his now natural American English hybrid, "Name's Sirius James, here for pleasure." He winked suggestively and slid his fake passport across the counter.
The woman didn't even look at it, far too busy gawking at Harry's forehead.
"Nasty thing, ain't it?" Harry said, trying not to blanch or start swearing. He winked again, trying desperately to make the woman notice that his eyes were blue and therefore he couldn't possibly be that Harry Potter - no, he didn't think it'd work, either, but then Muggle disguises left a lot to be desired. Harry had yet to find a Muggle concealer that could successfully hide his scar, and he just plain didn't look good in hats. "Got it working back on my Da's ranch. Learnt my lesson 'bout buckin' bronchos that day, let me tell you. Ain't nothing like a hoof to the brain pan to knock the stupid outta a thick skull like mine."
Still gawking, the woman's right hand slowly disappeared under the desk. Harry eyed it and the glass partition separating them with a rather jaundiced eye. To his surprise, no alarms immediately started blaring, and none of the wizards in the room started heading in his direction.
Instead, the woman simply stamped his passport with a shaking hand and then wordlessly waved him through to the other side of the booth. Harry moved over, letting Sam take his place at the glass partition.
Harry frowned, "Why do I get the feeling something bad's about to happen?"
"My Lord, we have confirmation."
"Do feel free to elucidate, Lucius," the Dark Lord Voldemort said darkly, artistically sprawled across the seat of an elaborate throne of carved rock. He tapped his yew and phoenix feather wand against his left knee to a rhythm that the Dark Lord could only hear in his own head. He lazily twirled it between his fingertips like an old west gunslinger as he tilted his chin towards Lucius Malfoy. The unspoken threat was clear. "My patience finds itself tested when the hired help thinks itself clever."
The shadowed man who knelt next to the smaller figure who had spoken earlier straightened slightly. "My Lord," he said, barely bound anticipation fairly dripping from each phoneme, "Harry Potter has been sighted."
Voldemort very nearly jerked upright, but stilled at the last minute instead, like a snake who suddenly found himself with his prey exactly where he wanted him. "Where?"
"Heathrow Airport, my Lord," Lucius said. "A Muggle transport station in Lond--"
"Do not patronise me, Lucius. I know what Heathrow is," Voldemort said. "And the Watch Tower?"
"Reported alarm activity on floor forty-two," Lucius confirmed, grey eyes gleaming. "Your troops await your orders. I, myself, am prepared to lead your forces in the capture of--"
"Yes," Voldemort cut Lucius off with a vague sweep of his wand. He shifted in his throne, bringing both feet to press against the stone dais that his throne was mounted upon, and leaned forwards. "Ready the Inner Circle. Forward the following: the boy is not to be harmed. I want him in one piece, the better for the breaking."
Lucius bowed his head, and then stood. With a swish of his robes, he turned and prepared to leave. His stride fast and long, he'd made it across half of the Dark Lord's throne room before being called again.
"Oh, and Lucius?"
Voldemort was on his feet when Lucius glanced back at him. "Yes, my Lord?"
The Dark Lord smirked. "Alert the troops as to my presence in the field."
"Maybe because you just jinxed it beyond all Hell?" Dean said.
Harry shot Dean an annoyed look in return as the taller man passed through passport control and joined him in waiting on the other side. "Really," Harry said, "how stupid of me. Here--I'll knock on wood…"
He'd just lifted his left hand to tap Dean upside the head - Dean already jerking away with the air of impending retaliation - when Sam stepped up behind his older brother and saved Harry the trouble.
"Oi!" Dean protested, rubbing his no doubt stinging scalp and twisting to face Sam. "What was that for?"
"You are such a two year old," Sam said with the sigh of the long suffering.
"Me?" Dean spluttered. "He started it."
"And I'm finishing it," Sam said. He tucked his passport into one of the inside pockets of his jacket and jerked his chin towards a sign that said 'baggage reclaim'. "C'mon. The sooner we get out of here, the happier I'll be."
That was a sentiment that Harry had to agree with. The walls were still lined with sentinel wizards who would occasionally break away to pounce on an unsuspecting victim or two, and it still set Harry on edge. He almost wanted to be noticed, if only so it would give him the opportunity to punch one of those bastard's in the kisser, but that would be more than foolhardy, and Dean had been right. Didn't mean Harry liked it.
Dean apparently didn't like it, either. Or maybe he just didn't like Harry. As Sam set off in the direction that the sign had indicated, and Harry and Dean fell in behind him, the elder Winchester glared. "Asshole," he said.
"Dickwad," Harry replied simply.
The dirty look he got in return only amplified as they reached the luggage carousel and Harry's bag trundled through the gap in the wall first. Smirking, Harry slung the duffel bag over one shoulder, and took stock of the enlarged room they were now in. There were fewer wizards present or, at least, fewer wizards blatantly waving their wizard-fu in other people's faces, but they were still there. The vast majority - an even dozen, maybe - were milling, weaving their way through the crowd, keeping an eye on things but not moving to do anything overtly threatening like grand theft kidnap. There were a few simply standing by the carousels, no doubt under the guise of assistance or of fellow, rather exotic passengers.
Something was…off. Harry couldn't put the feeling into words, but it was there, seeping into his bones and making his teeth ache.
Sam's bag swung into sight next, bobbing along behind a hot pink suitcase. Harry glanced around, searching for the root of the sensation. He vaguely heard Dean make some Barbie related crack at Sam, but Sam's response was a bit too low to make out as he hauled his bag off of the carousel and stood back to wait for Dean's.
Sam's bag hit the ground by his sneakered feet.
And all Hell broke loose.
"Viscus Expello!"
Harry was in motion before he could stop to think about it. He threw himself across the few feet separating him from his travel companions and torpedoed into Sam, his shoulder catching Sam in the stomach and forcing him back and down. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Dean drop into a crouch and spin on his heel, jaw set as he searched out who had attacked them, fingers groping uselessly in the empty air that would once have held the butt of a fire arm.
It took a while for the Muggles to catch on and the screaming to start. Even then, once the first 'what the--?' had been said, and people started shifting away from the commotion, making double time to get to customs whether they had their luggage or not, it wasn't so much screaming as alarmed murmuring. In fact, the distinct lack of an appropriate response was far more worrisome than any panicked stampede or threat to call the police would have been. For a moment, Harry felt blindsided, and he stayed where he was, unable to move the length of his body from where it was pressing Sam down onto the linouleum floor. Then instinct and training kicked in.
"Shit," he said succinctly, pushing his weight up onto his elbows.
"What the Hell was that?" Dean demanded from somewhere close by. Harry rolled clear of Sam and scurried over to where Dean had holed up behind the low shelter of the luggage carousel, half-dragging the youngest Winchester along with him against the tide of slow-moving tourists. Halfway there, Sam finally managed to get his feet underneath him, and ran the rest of the way himself.
"Entrail-Expelling Curse," Harry said, dropping down next to Dean, and then shifting over as Sam joined them. "Does exactly what it says on the tin."
"Nice."
"Yeah. Not so much," Harry said. He glanced around, "Hit the wall over there, looks like." Said wall was scorched, like it had been torched by a flamethrower.
In the time it had taken Harry to pinpoint the spell's ultimate destination, the area had cleared of innocent bystanders, leaving only the three of them crouched behind the carousel, and, no doubt, whoever had fired at them in the first place.
Harry fell silent, ears straining for the barest of sounds beyond his own pounding heart beat and ragged breathing. When he could hear nothing but the squeak of his own jeans as he shifted, Harry very carefully froze, locking each individual muscle into place and then holding his breath. Even with no exhalation of air to distract him, and no brush of leather on denim to trick his ear, Harry couldn't hear so much as a murmur. He glanced at Sam, who shook his head, and then at Dean, who was frowning even before he noticed Harry's attention.
Left with no other choice, Harry swivelled in place until he was facing the carousel and his back was to open air. Then he slowly began to rise from his crouch, fingers locked over the lip of the carousel in order to ensure that he didn't lose his balance. He stopped the moment he could see over the carousel, locking his knees in place and blinking.
There were thirteen robed figures left on the floor, all of whom were looking in his direction. One raised their hand negligently and, with a careless swish, sent an angry coloured jet of light zooming his way. Cursing under his breath, Harry ducked, and the spell sped overhead, coming close enough to ruffle the bird's nest he called a hair style. He peeked back over the carousel just long enough to note that none of the figures had taken so much as a step forward, and then dropped back down next to Sam and Dean.
"Thirteen," he said, voice barely more than a hushed whisper. "Thirteen trigger happy little nutsos to our, er, ranged from our four o'clock to our eight o'clock." Harry paused to be a bit more specific, pointing through the carousel to where he could best remember the robed figures being. "As a matter of, hopefully, only academic interest, there's always been twelve in Voldemort's Inner Circle. Add the big bad himself…"
"And we're in for a world of hurt," Dean filled in.
"They're probably just peons," Harry said, unable to avoid sounding like he was trying to convince himself. "Opportunistic peons. I mean, the chances that--"
"Potty! Come out and pla-a-a-ay!"
Harry winced.
Sam caught it. "Don't tell me," he said, "world of hurt?"
If only they knew. "Bellatrix Lestrange," Harry said, "Voldemort's most faithful Death Eater. She's…" Harry blinked, "…dead, actually." He lifted his voice so that he could be clearly heard by even the furthest Death Eater and called, "Didn't I kill you?"
Bellatrix simply giggled.
"There's a lot of that going around, love," another, still familiar voice said with a throaty little purr. Though it had only been a couple of days since he'd heard the voice last, it took Harry a few seconds to place it.
That girl…sulphur…demon…
"Teleportation," Harry murmured, feeling a little sick at the thought.
Sam blinked. "What?"
On cue, the smell of rotten eggs assaulted his nostrils, and, in the space of a single blink, the girl was in front of him, cowl loose around her shoulders rather than over her head, and eyes locked, unerringly, on Harry.
"Hello, lover," she crooned. And pounced.
Harry had always been fast. First it had been something cultivated whilst fleeing from Dudley, his whale of a cousin. Then it had been something finely honed through Quidditch and his status as Hogwarts' youngest seeker in a century. After that, it had been a matter of survival, first because of Voldemort and the relentless speed with which the older wizard would cast curse after curse, then because he chose to put his life on the line, sometimes going mano a mano with the biggest, baddest, fastest supernatural nasties that bad luck could find.
He still barely got out of the way in time. Sam helped, grabbing a hold of his collar even as Harry threw himself left and bodily yanking Harry the last couple of extra inches. The demon hit the side of the carousel where Harry had previously been leaning with a loud clang and, as if that had been a cue, spells started flying.
"Shit!" Dean. Harry glanced back over his shoulder and tried not to cringe as his forced forward momentum turned the movement into whiplash. Dean was on his feet, shoulders ducking and weaving as he tried to stay clear of the barrage of spells being cast in their general direction. He'd obviously attempted to follow in Sam and Harry's wake, but had been foiled -- he was standing over the demon girl, a foot on either side of her ribcage, straining against the hold she had on his right ankle and trying hard not to go down. His left hand was delving deep in the inner reaches of his leather jacket, fingers groping as they--his hand was suddenly wrenched clear of the jacket, and Harry got what he'd been going for; an innocuous airline-brand packet of salt was clenched in Dean's fist.
As the older Hunter tore the packet open with his teeth, simultaneously trying to slam his captured foot into the demon girl's ribcage, Harry tore himself free of Sam's grasp and dove the couple of feet to his duffel bag, which had been flung clear in the commotion. Still shielded from Voldemort's forces by the carousel--though that could be blown up or vanished the very second one of the morons out there got a clue--Harry unzipped the duffel and quickly began rooting through it. His fingers closed around two plastic bottles of water and he yanked them out, tossing one at Sam, and keeping the second for himself.
"It's holy!" He said, twisting the cap free on his bottle and unceremoniously upending the contents into demon girl's face. Sam followed suit, and the girl screamed, an unnatural sound that made Harry's bones vibrate. Her skin cracked and peeled where the holy water had made contact, blistering and oozing with pus, burning and smoking as she writhed and kicked herself away, releasing Dean's ankle.
Too late.
"Confringo!"
Dean, still spitting more salt than he'd managed to get onto the demon, wouldn't see it coming in time. From his crouched position, Harry barely managed to make out the spell's trajectory…right at Dean's head.
Without thinking, Harry shrugged out of his leather jacket and swung it up into Dean's face. It caught there, shrouding Dean's head like he was some leatherhead version of a whacked out ghost. And the spell ricocheted; it hit Harry's jacket, and just bounced off, before striking a wall and being absorbed into the plaster. Dean tore the jacket off of his face, glared at it for a moment, and then hurled it back at Harry, dropping to his knees behind the relative safety of the carousel. Harry caught the jacket neatly and slipped it back on, even pausing to zip it up--it's protection worth far more than the few seconds it took to ensure it.
"What the Hell--?"
Harry cut Dean off with a shake of his head. "There are so many reasons that this isn't the time," he said, jerking his chin towards Sam.
Even with nothing but a plastic bottle of holy water and some bastard Latin in his arsenal, and even with the chaos going on around them--and the Death Eaters weren't advancing, why was that?--Sam had the writhing demon girl cornered, one hand tracing out the sign of the cross in the air above her. Sam's hand then dropped to press into the girl's forehead, his muscles having to strain as she attempted to buck him off and squirm free. Sam wasn't having any of it, though, and even Harry felt something uncomfortable thrum down his spine when the Hunter fiercely intoned, "Ab omni hoste visibili et invisibili et ubique in hoc saeculo liberetur!"
The girl, though still thrashing and cursing up a storm, suddenly seemed to calm somehow, like she'd just realised who she was. Accordingly, she wasted no time in blinking away, leaving behind the stench of sulphur and a puddle of holy water.
In the sudden absence of her screams, Harry thought he might have realised why the Death Eaters hadn't advanced upon them. Indeed, why the barrage of spells had eased off somewhat. He could hear his name…
"Harry! Harry, run for it!"
What?
Frowning, Harry stuck his head clear of the carousel again, and stared. What had been a relatively calm, empty space the last time he'd checked--all be it full of people jonesing to kill him--was now a raging battle. The thirteen cloaked figures had been challenged and met by half a dozen figures who were conspicuous simply because they weren't trying to hide anything. And, in one case, because of the bright red hair.
Harry watched for a moment longer and then dropped back down next to Dean and Sam. Red hair was good enough for him.
"We need to get out of here," he said, "the cavalry won't hold them long, not without Dumbledore and with the Dark Tosser."
Sam frowned. "But what about the cavalry? We can't just leave them here."
Harry shot him a look, annoyed that Sam thought he had the monopoly on caring for these people. "We can't do anything," he said. "That's why they're the cavalry and we're not. You find yourself a sawn-off shotgun or two from somewhere and I'll be right behind you kicking arse and taking names, but unless you want to try and drown them in half a litre of mineral water, we're skedaddling." Harry looked around, not waiting for consent. He couldn't see any other escape route other than the way they'd come in, and he didn't think passport control would yield many more ways out than off in an airplane. "Do you see anything? A loose air vent, an open window…hell, just a window?"
There was a moment of almost painful silence from his two companions, broken only by the roared incantations and yells from the other side of the luggage carousel. For such a seemingly stupid thing, it kept them away from the fire fight effectively enough, the little trundling treadmill still weighed heavy with unclaimed suitcases, and still going around and around and around. The fight on the other side seemed like a million miles away. He felt like he had all the time in the world.
Then Sam broke the silence with a grudging grunt, "What about over there?"
Harry looked. Harry blinked.
"It's a wall," Dean said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and his brother was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
"It's a wizarding zone!" Harry said suddenly, getting it. "Veiled from prying Muggle eyes. Great. It won't stop them following us, but there'll be a way out. Probably."
"Probably." Dean snorted. "That word always just makes my day."
"Harry!" The voice was more persistent now, tinged with just a little pain. Harry thought he was almost close to remembering which of the Weasley sons it belonged to. "Get your arse moving!"
"Alright," Dean said, "hold your damn horses."
The elder Hunter rocked up onto his heels and Harry copied his position, shifting over a bit to allow Sam the space to do similar. "Right," Harry said, "fast as we can, no looking back. Dean, grab hold of Sam before you go through--should stop you from going splat. I'll take rear, Sam takes point. Got that?"
Two reluctant nods met his words, Sam looking none too impressed to be leaving, Dean looking none too impressed to be having his well-being resting on 'probably's and 'should's.
"Right. Go!"
Harry fairly roared the last, pushing Sam and Dean forwards and then racing to keep on their heels. The Order wizards tried their hardest to stop any spells from getting through to them, but they were outnumbered and weakened, and more than one nasty hex splashed uselessly against Harry's jacketed back. Some sort of bludgeoning curse took out the carpeted flooring between Dean and Harry, and Harry had to leap over the smoking crater left behind.
"Go! Go! Go!" He urged, and Sam slipped beyond the wall, Dean's hand on his shoulder. Dean started to follow him less than a split second later, and Harry lunged, his fingertips barely catching Dean's coattails as he, too, was pulled through into the wizarding zone.
"Don't stop--keep going," Harry cried, still sprinting forwards as he burst into a large, gleaming marble room. The abandoned room was L-shaped, bent like a dog's hind leg. The far wall was covered in huge fireplaces. Just as Harry had hoped--a floo connection. "Get to one of the fireplaces!"
Sam made a beeline across the room, Dean on his heels and Harry right behind them, still ducking his head as the odd spell zinged past. They were travelling so fast that, even when they burst past the crook of the room's L-shape and had no impediments to their line of sight, they'd made it to the fireplace in the time it took their brains to notice the pale figure leaned against the wall and for the 'stop' command to make it to their legs.
Harry's heart froze in his chest.
"Sam…you'll need the powdery stuff in the ceramic jug on the mantel piece," he said plainly, stepping in front of the two brothers, and not removing his eyes from the masked figure. Red orbs stared back. He stepped a little closer, absently raising his hands up behind his head. "Get into the fireplace--you'll need to keep hold of Dean or it'll burn--and toss the powder down into the flame." He couldn't understand how he'd been so stupid. "I told you about a safe house during our story on the plane. You'll need to whisper the name, and clear out of there soon as. Got that?"
Sam swallowed. "Yeah…"
Harry nodded once. "Good," he said, and then threw himself at Lord Voldemort.
The taller wizard seemed surprised at such audacity, and Harry got an elbow into Voldemort's ribs and a fist into his eye before a vicious backhand caught him across the face and sent him stumbling backwards. Harry didn't go down. Instead, he flung himself back into the fray, his right leg scything about in a powerful flying roundhouse. Voldemort caught his ankle.
Harry blinked. Voldemort. Caught. His. Ankle.
"Holy shi--"
Voldemort smirked, and then twisted. His shoulders rolling, Voldemort spun around and slammed Harry into the wall as one would take a baseball bat to a piñata. Harry grunted, and hoped it was just his imagination that had heard that cracking sound.
"Petulant child," Voldemort said, voice hissing. "You have no idea how completely out of your depth you truly are."
For once, Harry felt too winded to let fly with a proper comeback. So instead he spat in Voldemort's face.
The Dark Lord's eyes widened in a fury that, had it been any other guy, would have been almost comical. Harry defiantly didn't gulp. Not even when Voldemort roared in pure, unadulterated anger and flung him across the room like he was nothing.
But Voldemort's aim was off; Harry didn't crash into the wall, or even into the mantle piece, which would have no doubt snapped his spine in half. Instead, he landed in Dean Winchester's outstretched arms, knocking the two of them to the ground inside the fireplace with a very mutual grunt. Sam, standing above them with a fierce expression on his face and one hand curved around Dean's neck, gutturally hissed the name of the safe house Harry had given him, and threw the floo powder into the raging flame about him.
The world collapsed in on itself, bleeding sickly greens and white hot flashes of light as it began to spin in place. The last sight Harry saw before being tossed into the floo network was Voldemort's face twisted in rage, and his wand raised as he snarled the two words that Harry hated more than anything.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Suddenly, someone very close by yelped in surprise, and Harry felt himself being spat out of a fireplace in a bundle of head-over-heel-over-arse grace. He landed on his head, and had to stay very still for a very long moment just to be sure that he wouldn't throw up. As he lay still, he listened, hearing nothing but nearby breathing, and his own heart rate. Alone, but for the Winchesters, then. Good. He cracked open a single eye halfway and blinked at the atrocious rug he was half-lying on. Definitely Grimmauld Place. Double good. He'd just lay there for a while, or a century or two, and get his bearings--
Two fists clenched around his collar and hauled him upright.
"Wha--?"
His back hit the wall hard enough to make it shower plaster, and his head snapped back a split second later with a crack that definitely wasn't in his imagination and, which made white lightening shoot through Harry's skull.
"Where is he?" The owner of the hands demanded, and Harry was more bemused than relieved that he recognised the voice.
"What?" Harry frowned, shaking his head to clear it, and reaching up to try and peel the fingers back away from his windpipe. He frowned up at Dean Winchester's heated glare, and sent his own back full-force. "I don't know what--"
"What did you do to him?" Dean snarled, apparently deciding to try a different track. He wrenched Harry forwards by his grip on his throat, only to ram him back into the wall a second time. "What did you do to Sam?"
Sam? Harry blinked again, and peered past Dean's shoulder…to a room that definitely didn't have Sam in it. His mind flashed back over the last couple of minutes, helplessly trying to make sense of…
"Shit," Harry said.
And Dean Winchester's fist collided with his face.