Twin Meeting

Aillil prompt: Potter/Dresden, Harry (Potter) is just about as old as Harry Dresden.

*Where as my previous prompts were based on the Dresden novels, just for something different, these are based on the Dresden Files (TV show)*

Wizards, as it goes, are rare. Most of the world knows this very well, as to them, for the most part – wizards and witches don't exist. So it isn't all that unusual to have a 'peer' wizard who is ten years older or younger, the rare is to find someone only a year older or a year younger. Almost unheard of, is to find someone your exact age.

This is because of magic, the very reason they are wizards, isn't something to be understood or measured out – least of all, predicted.

"I'm telling you." Dresden hears him as if he's standing right at his shoulder, though he sits between Murphy and her partner, Det. Sid Kirmani.

"That I did not kill anyone." That voice echoes with magic to Dresden, and he shivers, because it's like standing in a cave that echo is deep and bone jarring. It doesn't hit him that it's an English accent in Chicago until he glimpses the man speaking, black haired, lanky, all leanness and angles.

"He's a wizard." Dresden finds himself saying, warning them away before anything else – then, as those living green eyes land on him.

"He's telling the truth." There is a certain saying that people without magic picked up and thought merely romantic instead of a defining truth: the eyes are the windows to the soul. Dresden doesn't dare meet those eyes; a wizard gazing into another wizard's eye is the most powerful of magic, and it's most intimate. It isn't done in polite society, isn't done between strangers. Where magic is involved you can never tell what the results would be.

"How do you know?" It isn't Murphy or Sid who ask it, it's the wizard sitting between them, leaning forward and tilting his head at Dresden as if he's just found a new spell, or species. A scholar's look and Harry Dresden sighs.

"The likes of you wouldn't abide to be held by the likes of them if you went bad enough to murder. You'd be like the big bad wolf and blow the house down, bricks, sticks, straw and all. Frankly, I don't know why you haven't just confused them all and been on your way." Dresden doesn't mind saying this so frankly in front of Murphy and Sid, better that they know now, like this, then later have to explain. They don't look either way as if they quite believe him anyway. Only Murphy takes a step back.

Slowly, the wizard with dark hair (like his) and bright eyes (like his, albeit green – not blue) smiles. He knows it's the truth. They can't lie to one another.

"Then why were you at the scene of the crime, caught red-handed?" Sid hisses at the wizard, who sighs, and that magic of his retreats, as if it was playing with Dresden's own, cat and mouse.

"My friend, Hermione Ganger had contact here, with him – Jim Lyon, the murdered man. She hadn't gotten in contract with him for three weeks, and worried. It was on my way, so I checked. I found the mess and was trying to clean it up. It was done messily, and with magic." It seems, in the old way, that the stranger hadn't mentioned magic to the cops until Harry Dresden let the cat out of the bag. English accent, he remembers, and grins – very old world.

"That door – the only way in and out - was locked, Mr. Potter, how did you get in, let alone it being on your way? There are no traces of you outside that room." Dresden goes very still, because names are dropping out of the hat here and now – Hermione Ganger is his age, powerful, and a genius. Magic –as if it seeks out those lacking in a survival instinct - rarely gifts someone as talented as that, but he knows that name – knows the name of every wizard and witch around his age. And in their world, there is only one Mr. Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and a war-wizard out of the finest school overseas.

The exact same age as Dresden, if it were possible (and it is, magic defines and redefines the laws of possibility and probability) to be twins split by birth in magic, born overseas from each other, they are it. Dresden knows that without sharing a literal soul gaze with another wizard.

"Harry Potter." Dresden says, shaky as if he can't catch his breath. Harry Potter nods, nobly, as if acknowledging an equal. They are equal, exactly, and that Potter found out before him is only because Potter has more fine control over his magic and with wizards – there are those with raw power, and those with the mastery over power, but rarely both. Dresden notes his wand, just as Potter had noted the staff. Bigger is not always better, but rather the focus defines how fine a wizard manipulates magic – his own, another's, and magic all around.

"I came down, you might say, from the fire place. Jim Lyon was connected to the Floo Network." This Harry Potter answers absently, as if it doesn't have his whole attention.

"Do they – the High Council, know you're here?" If anything, the realization of who sits here before him hasn't improved his blood pressure. Green like living plants, and blue like sky and sea meet.

"They will now." Magic is magic, it's what wizards and witches know and feel everyday. The whole city knows what has passed, the feel of twin souls, twin magic's, meeting.