Title: Celtic Stars and Crooked Scars
Characters: Harry Potter, Dean, Sam
Rating: M (for language only)
Warnings: Language, non-descriptive torture, and blood.
Spoilers: None, though this happens in Season 3, so knowing up until then might be helpful.
Word Count: 2,355 (~11,000 total)
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series or Supernatural.
Summary: Dean finds himself captured by a real psychopath, and meets Harry, a boy who has been chained up for years. It's a desperate attempt at survival and time is ticking away. Tick tock, Dean, tick tock.
Author's Note: PLEASE READ the note at the end. It's very important. This is the final part(other than a pending epilogue.) Enjoy. Geez, I love this story so much and I don't even know why.
Sam kneels at the back of a deserted alley, eyes fixed on a pool of red blood somewhere near the back. Human blood. He sighs, standing up and rubbing his face tiredly. This is so like Dean. When the phone rings and an untraceable number pops up, Sam figures its just his day getting worse.
Five minutes later, he's ringing up Bobby and asking about a ring.
(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)
It takes Dean a few minutes to open his eyes after he felt consciousness hit him again. A combination of pain and the faintest lightheaded feeling pulls at the back of his skull, encasing him in a surreal veil of nothingness.
He can tell a lot of things before he's fully conscious. He's back on one of the odd wooden structure, hanging by only his wrists, the pain making his arm twitch in odd little spasms. He's been hanging here a lot longer than last time. Another thing? The room is much larger than the last one. Even in his stasis-like state, he can feel a large emptiness surrounding him. It's not as suffocating as last time, and a thin breeze of arms flows around him, trickling over his naked torso reverently. The fact that he isn't alone is also clear. Around him, he can hear the panicked breathes of at least ten more people, and the sobs of others.
So the people who disappeared are still alive, kept here, underground.
His green eyes, dull from the haze of tiredness still gripping him tight within it's clutches, finally open and he discovers...very little. The room is dark—so dark it's difficult to see much of the room without it starting to get a bit distorted around the edges. The room turns out to be much larger than he expected—it could easily fit a high school gymnasium within its confines and have some room left over for a small soccer match.
The people, a far as he can see, are in positions identical to his, forming a very large circle around something...and his vision swarms as he attempts to attune his vision to the very center, where a symbol, blood red and huge, is painted right in the middle of it all.
Okay, a ritual. A very big, very bad one if this many humans are needed as the main course.
Calem is dabbling in some pretty powerful stuff. It seems not even the psychopathic human serial killers can keep to the normal stuff—knives and guns. Nope. Satanic rituals are all the rage this year kiddies.
"Dean, we're all waiting for you to wake up. You fall unconscious at the most unorthodox of times, don't you?" Deans groans and closes his eyes, because that's not the voice he wants to wake up to. In fact, he would be happy if he never has to hear the guys vile tongue ever again. "Uh-uh, Dean-boy. Gotta stay awake for this part. I would apologize, but I'm not sorry, so it would be a bit redundant, don't you think?"
"Thought you just wanted the stupid ring." His tongue twists inside his mouth, aching and sore. Great. If he becomes mute because of this episode, he's really going to be pissed.
"What? This ring?" When the very same ring—the only leverage Dean holds in the situation—is held of to his face, glinting in the faint light coming from a few candles palced cleverly around the room. His stomach sinks. Dammit. "Your brother generously came by and gave it to me. I think he expected me to let you go. How...funny."
"Shut up, you bastard."
"Nuh-uh-uh. Your momma would be ashamed of that mouth." Calem smiles widely, clasping the ring tightly in his right fist. "Now, I need you to do me a favor and sit there, look pretty, and die when I tell you to, all right?"
"Go to Hell." Sure, it's probably not the wisest thing to say in the present situation, but Dean has never claimed to be smart. That's all Sammy.
"Oh, my right foot's already in the fire. I just need a little push. You won't care either way in a few minutes anyway." Dean frowns, because it doesn't make any sense. Calem pauses for a moment, turns, and looks Dean right in the eye while wearing one of his trademark smirks. "No hard feelings, of course."
"Right. No hard feelings," It was barely a mumble and Calem gave no sign that he heard the quiet retort.
Instead, the to-be mass murderer strides towards the center of the room and comes to a stop right in the middle of the symbol where a series of inverted arrows were pointing, putting the ring right in the center. Then, he takes a step back, completely outside the red lines.
A few black candles are lit outside the circle of prisoners by guards, though Dean never sees the actual people. Despite knowing it's pointless, he pulls on his restraints a few times, cursing at his weakness without a care as to whether Calem is listening.
Calem doesn't seem to mind either way. He does a quick 180, looking decidedly gleeful. This is so not going well at all for the good-guys. "Bring him in."
'Him' turns out to be Harry, bloody and blindfolded. Even the darkness can't hide the fact that Harry's paler than ever and shaking like a leaf. He isn't crying and Dean wants to applaud him for that. No need to give the murderers unnecessary joy by demonstrating so much tangible fear.
Calem reaches out and grabs Harry by the hair; at first, the boy seems to panic and lashes out vigorously with his arms, wildly trying to take down anything with his small hands. At one point, Harry actually gets close enough to swipe at Calem's face...and leaves bloody claw marks down his cheek.
The first negative emotion Dean sees Calem wear appears when he reaches up to touch his cheek and his hand comes away with blood. "Stupid kid." Calem swings at Harry and the delicate kid falls to the ground, unconscious from the hard blow to the back of the head. "Good thing this will still work if you're unconscious, dearest."
Dean makes sure Calem isn't looking his way and bangs his head on the edge of the wood that holding him up and discovered two things. One? Banging his head didn't help at all. And two? The wood fucking hurts.
Calem quickly and efficiently places Harry in the outer ring of the symbol—as a power filter, Dean realizes dully, his head beginning to spin. Almost instantly, Dean is able to recognize the effects of a drug—he was drugged.
It isn't like any other drug he's ever been under the influence of—and there has been a fair few. Most drugs have him either falling asleep within minutes or make him do things he really doesn't want to talk about in the morning. Whatever Calem put in his system kept him awake—wide awake—and for some reason, he suddenly doesn't want to say anything.
Psychopaths.
He has to get out of the getup somehow—had to get these people away from this...
Why do you care?
He twitches, startled by the foreign voice in his head. Okay, so he's going crazy. No biggie. Nothing new.
You don't know these people...why do you care?
He didn't answer the voice, because answering a voice that's only in your head? It's a whole new level of insanity, even for him.
You don't care.
The change in tactic surprises him. But it shouldn't. It's his own head...right?
You don't care...
You don't care...
You don't care...
I do.
You don't.
Dean shoves the voice away, trying to escape the influence of the drug, but it just springs back, wrapping his head in a hazy fog. How is he supposed to get out of this when he can't think straight? Calem made it sound like Sam's out of commission, so that's completely useless...
He eyes catch on something through the fog...something strange...
Calem has his back turned away from the symbol, chanting a strange latin phrase under his breath as his eyes gaze towards the ceiling. It's so clinché, Dean has the sudden urge to laugh in the melodramatic man's face for the effort at trying to be impressive when it clearly is not working in his favor.
Harry, however, is not where Calem left him. The boy is on his toes, bare feet coming in handy as he quietly stalks forward, slightly crouched. He has a weird expression on his face—as if he's about to do something he's not sure of.
Harry reaches beneath his thin shirt and pulls out a knife that chills Dean's blood. The knife is so familiar, probably because it's the first knife John ever gave Sam, right after revealing their hunting tendencies, and it's in Harry's not-so-capable hands.
Harry never knew what hit him.
One second, the knife is clutched tightly in inexperienced fingers as if it's a lifeline and the next, Calem's spinning around as if he somehow sensed the boy's movement. Harry still attempts to go for a killing blow but the sad truth is Calem's so much larger than little, malnourished Harry—and doubly strong. Harry really had no chance in hindsight.
Calem plucks the dagger from Harry's hands as if its a toy and shoves the boy to the ground—Dean winces when the sound of a sharp crack comes from that general direction. A broken wrist, probably. Sam and Dean have had enough of those combined to know what it sounds like.
Then something happens—something Dean may have missed if he blinked at the wrong time.
Despite the broken wristbone, Harry grits his teeth and jerks one of Calem's legs out from underneath him as the megalomaniac went to kick Harry for his troubles. Dean watches the fall in slow motion—the surprise that crosses Calem's face, the anger, and finally, the moment when the murderer twist at the wrong time and falls on the knife in his own hands.
He didn't die quickly.
It isn't the death Calem deserves—he needs much worse—but it's over and Dean doesn't care about anything other than that.
Harry stands next to the body and Dean can see him trembling from a mile away as the boy stares at the body, blank-faced. No guards come running—there's no sound of bullets being loaded or shots taken. It's suddenly quiet—almost too quiet.
"Harry," His throat burns as he fights off the drug. It's surprising he can talk at all under the effects. "You need to get outta here, kid."
Harry seems to snap out of his trance, frowning as he looks up at Dean with wide green eyes. "No." Harry takes the knife back in two hands, holding it close. "I have to get everyone out."
Right. So Harry has to turn around and be one of those save-the-people kind of kids—not that Dean's complaining. It might make his job a whole lot easier. "Okay, any chance you can get me down from here?"
Harry takes a few steps forward, strangely cautious for a kid. "I don't know. I can try."
Dean nods, testing the restraints a third time. Nope. Still completely out of his hands. "You do that, then."
(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)
The boy walks in circles around Dean, only stopping once he is out of Dean's eyesight. He stares at the exposed back of the man who helped him and smiles sadly. He slowly raises his hand, his eyebrows furrowing in concentration. His hands are trembling and he's desperately trying not to think about the man he just killed.
Even if the knife hadn't been in his hand when it went through Calem's stomach, it's still Harry's fault.
Harry hates Calem. He's hated him for years. Ever since...that day...he's been completely at Calem's mercy—a unwilling subject to his various pokes and prods. The tests—the awful experiments he was forced to put up with for over two years was enough to stifle any hesitations he had towards the actual killing, but the feeling of the blood dripping down his fingers, drying into puddles on the grounds sends shudders down his back.
Harry isn't a normal kid. He's always known he's different from everyone else. The day he got that letter in weird ink from the giant only cinched the whole deal together. Having...magic isn't normal. Magic. Even years of hearing the word come from Calem's lips can't make it seem real.
Even if it is real, and he knows it has to be—how else would he be able to do the things he can do?—it can't be good. Magic is why the Dursley's never loved him like they loved Dudley, Harry's obese cousin.
It's the reason why the Dursely's sold him to Calem for a quick pound or two before he could ever set foot on the train station and his newly bought school supplies were burned before his eyes. How is that good?
The chains clink open and Dean falls to the ground when his feet can't support him.
Harry sighs gently, sits down on the ground, and stares at the body—Calem—once more. His tormentor is dead.
Gone.
Harry knows what that ring is for—Calem was much too smug...too incredibly happy to have the ring back in his hands not to brag. It was all about reclaiming heritage. Apparently, Calem's family once used to be some pretty powerful sorcerers with everything going for them until a Hunter stole the ring from them, and their powers in the process.
Harry isn't a stupid kid. He can read between the lines.
Calem's ancestors were just as twisted and insane as he was, so a hunter came along and made them less...powerful.
But Calem is...was...the last of his family—the only one left. The ring in anyone else's hands is useless. Harry pulls the ring out of his pocket, staring at the strange Celtic symbols, wondering where it all went wrong.
It's not over. It's never over.
" Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others " Robert Louis Stevenson
Sorry, Sam refused to write himself for me, so he kinda...got cut from the scene? It's hard to believe he's my favorite character.
So...my plan at first was to have Harry stab Calem, but then it started to seem unbelievable. Little Harry against a very-capable adult? Not very likely. In retrospect, I like this way better. Poetic justice, in a way.
This is the important part: Okay, so maybe not the best place to end the story, but it fit my purposes. I am, however, thinking about writing an epilogue despite this technically being the end. Review and tell me if you want a little bit of a look down the road a bit. I don't know how long. Two? Five? Ten years later? I really want people opinions on this one. Heck, suggestions and ideas from my readers would be awesome. Tell me something and I may write it.
Review.