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The Tainted Blood of the Father	By : StarLightMassacre Category: Supernatural > Crossovers Views: 7278 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Harry Potter or Supernatural; all rights go to J. K. Rowling and Eric Kripke respectively. I make no money for this piece of fictional writing and never will.

Chapter List
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Last Time
Harry cracked a thin smile at that and John left him alone. He didn’t want to push Harry too much, but he would find out the extent of what that filth had done to his son and he would try and get Harry to trust him enough to see to the injuries that were making him wince every now and then and move so stiffly. He was going to try his damnedest to make this situation work while keeping Harry as safe as possible. Failure was not an option here.
Chapter Three – Lessons in Trust
John made his way back down the stairs and wondered what he’d done to deserve what had happened to him in his life. First his Wife had been killed and his two baby boys had lost their Mother, then he’d found out about the vile creatures that terrorised innocent people the length and breadth of the country, he’d almost lost his boys several times over on hunts. His mind immediately pulled up the Shtriga incident and a cold shiver went down his spine as he remembered coming home to find that thing feeding on his baby Sammy. It was still one of the only hunts he’d ever bailed on and one of the worst hunts he’d been on that still, to this day, spread fear into his heart. If he hadn’t gotten back to the motel when he had…he closed his eyes and blocked out those thoughts.
Now he found out that his youngest, a boy who was only fourteen years old and had been created from him and Mary, had been orphaned at just fifteen months old. He needed to look into that house fire, because it struck very similar to how Mary had died. The only difference it seemed was how old Harry had been and the fact that James had also been killed.
He made it back to the living room as he run a hand over his growth of beard. He needed to figure out how he could look after Harry without getting him injured on a near daily basis. That boy had been hurt enough already. He wondered how far Harry would run if he just came out and told him the truth about what he, and his older brothers, did for a living. He was well aware how crazy it seemed and even people who had been victims of these creatures had had trouble believing what they’d truly been attacked by as they tried to reason away what they had actually seen with something more believable.
“How is he?” Sam, ever the concerned worrier, asked him.
John looked up at him, breaking his heavy thoughts, to see Sam and Dean sat next to one another on the one couch while Bobby was up and searching through his books, but he was still listening, even as he grumbled about finding appropriate books for Harry to study.
“Out of his depth and upset. His wrists are bruised like someone tied him up.”
“The driver?” Dean asked, his eyes, so much like Harry’s but without the gleam of innocent naïvety, were stone cold and as hard as flint.
“I think so. I tried to ask, but he said he couldn’t speak about it yet. Said he was still afraid.”
“He’s got nothing to be afraid of here.” Bobby said seriously. “Anything that comes through that door will be full of buckshot before that boy even knows that its here.”
“I second that.” Dean said as he stalked angrily to the fridge and pulled out four beers. He handed one to each man and kept one for himself. “So what are we gonna do with him? Have we gotta get him to this school of his in Scotland?”
“He’s not going back.” John said as he took a long pull on his beer.
“You can’t just take him out of school!” Sam burst out angrily, not about to let his Dad do the same to Harry as he had to him when he’d decided to go to Stanford, giving him that damn ultimatum that if he left for school he wouldn’t be allowed to come back.
“Sammy…” Dean tried to intervene, as he always did.
“I’m not taking him from anywhere.” John said as calmly as he could manage, hand tightening on the neck of his bottle to try and ease away his anger.
The very last thing he wanted right now was to start butting heads with Sammy again. They’d been doing so well since finding out about Harry and both his boys had done well with dealing with the fact that Harry was their full blooded younger brother, that he and Mary had donated what amounted to a surrogate baby to another couple twenty-four years ago.
“It would be easier if he was at this school of his for ten months a year, but he doesn’t want to go back and he decided it for himself. He said he wants to stay here, with us.” John told them, doing well to keep his cool.
“And you’re going to let him?” Sam asked, unwilling to give up.
He wasn’t able to see why the book hungry, seemingly intelligent young boy that Harry was, didn’t want to go back to his, apparently rather elite, boarding school. He didn’t want to see that spark of innocence drilled out of Harry, he didn’t want to watch as he was dragged about and into their messes, being trained to become a hunter. He didn’t want to see Harry become as cold and dysfunctional as the rest of them.
“Something is stopping him from wanting to go back, Sam.” John told him firmly. “There was a look on his face. I’m going to try and talk to him about it again, but between what that driver did to him and the issue of his school, him going back to school is the least pressing issue here. I’m not going to force him to go back to a school that he doesn’t want to go back to when he was attacked and possibly raped, I need to deal with that issue first as the bigger priority.”
“He won’t need to go back until August, maybe even as far away as September. But you said that he was there for ten months a year…which means he only went home for the summer holidays when the school would have been closed.” Bobby said. “It seems to me that he didn’t go home for any other holiday, not even Christmas, and he only went home when he was forced to. There’s something else going on here.”
John sat down and sighed heavily, drinking more beer.
“He’s too small an’ all.” Bobby carried on unrelentingly. “Ain’t no way that that boy is a healthy height or weight for his age and he was holding himself strange on the one side. Not to mention that bruise on his face and the cuts on his fingers.”
“I noticed that too.” John admitted gruffly. “I tried to see if there was any more damage done to him, but he’s hiding. Why else would he be wearing a sweater in the middle of summer?”
“He’s using it to hide more bruises?” Sam asked in shock.
“If he is then this goes deeper than you think.” Bobby told them. “If this had been a one off incident, then he wouldn’t be hiding those injuries. He wouldn’t even have those sweaters to hide the bruises with in the first place and he had nowhere to buy one from out in the middle of Nebraska before he made it to Ellen’s. He brought sweaters with him to hide those marks from anyone who’d see them. Why else would anyone wear a sweater in this god forsaken heat?”
“Wait, that would mean that he had them before he met that driver!” Dean burst out.
“If those people laid a damn finger on him…” John growled, trailing himself off as his hand clenched tight around his beer bottle.
He didn’t like that he hadn’t known about Harry’s existence, that he hadn’t known or even checked if James and Lily had used the samples to make a baby that was essentially his and Mary’s. He hadn’t given a thought to James or Lily in years and he felt guilty for that, they’d been wonderful friends to him and Mary over the year that they’d known them and he should have kept in contact for the mere fact that they could have given birth to his and Mary’s baby. If the demons had found out about Harry before he had….things could have gotten very grisly and he might never have gotten the chance to know his youngest son.
He’d already failed Harry before he’d even known about him. He’d been orphaned at a little over a year old and now it seemed like the people he’d been left with had been abusive as well. He was already angry that he hadn’t known about Harry, if it turned out that the people he’d been living with all these years had laid a single finger on him, he didn’t know what he’d do to the bastards.
“It’s no wonder he’s not talking about what that driver did…if this is commonplace to him then he’s probably used to hiding everything anyway.” Sam looked sickened, even as he said the words and John gritted his teeth hard at the mere thought of Harry thinking that this was normal. It was no wonder that he jumped and flinched whenever someone touched him.
“What the hell do we do?” Dean asked desperately.
“Leave it to me.” John sighed. “Can we stay here for a while, Bobby?”
“You know you can.” Bobby agreed immediately.
“I’ll see what I can get him to say tomorrow, for now he should be sleeping.”
“Maybe I could look this up, see what I can do to help.” Sam said, not waiting for an answer before he got his laptop out to see what he could dig up on the internet.
John drained his beer and sunk into his own thoughts. The very idea of his son, his and Mary’s son, being hurt in such a way filled him with such rage that he wanted to go on a hunt. It took every fibre of willpower he had not to leave and start searching for one just so that he could kill something.
Sam was clicking away at his laptop, searching out any websites that could help them deal with an abused teen. He spoke to Dean and Bobby when he found something interesting. John watched them for a bit, glancing at Dean as he cleaned his gun, exactly as he’d taught him years ago, before letting his mind float again, tuning in when Sam found something that he thought might help Harry, even a little bit.
At two in the morning, he ushered his older boys up the stairs and he went into his bedroom. Harry looked tiny in the bed, his face soft and relaxed as he slept. He looked impossibly younger in his sleep. His heart throbbed and he moved on automatic as he went up to Harry and pulled the covers up to his neck and tucked him in. He hadn’t tucked anyone in for a decade or more, but the familiar motions came to him without him having to think about it.
He noticed that Harry was wearing a long sleeved pyjama top and he looked flushed warm because of the summer heat. He saw the thick, hideous bruises on Harry’s wrists and he saw something on the underside that he hadn’t seen before, a thick bruise that was more on Harry’s arm than his wrist, like the branch on a tree…it was a bruise from a finger or a thumb, a man had gripped Harry’s wrists so tightly that he had bruised them badly. His teeth gritted again and he moved away before he started searching Harry’s sleeping body for more bruises.
He stripped himself off and pulled on a pair of pyjama bottoms, despite how warm it was, just for Harry’s sake. He needed to get some sleep, he needed to be prepared for what was coming tomorrow.
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Harry had changed out of his clothes as soon as John had closed the door, checking on his bruises and scabs quickly, using the mirror on the one wall to check on the vile, open wound in his one shoulder. It was open, a chunk of flesh missing, but it never bled anymore unless he was just out of the shower and rubbed it too vigorously. It was healing, just not particularly quickly.
He pulled on the long-sleeved shirt and the jogging bottoms he was using as pyjamas just in case his Father came back any time soon. He didn’t want him seeing anything more than he already had. The bruises and scabs that he couldn’t hide with clothes.
He climbed into his bed and he opened his backpack and got out his notebook and the book that Bobby had given to him. It was really interesting, not to mention incredibly difficult, to read, but he persevered and he managed to translate another paragraph.
He read and continued to decipher the ancient Latin until he started yawning every other minute and he had to put the book down. He switched off the bedroom light and snuggled down under his fresh covers. He never noticed John coming up or tucking him in, he was deeply asleep until he woke with a small gasp, sweating and panicked.
He’d had another nightmare. Thankfully not one of his screaming, thrashing ones so he hadn’t woken anyone else up. He calmed himself down and waited until he could breathe more easily and he could see better in the darkness before getting up.
He could make out the silhouette of John sleeping in the bed opposite his own. He sighed softly in thanks that the man hadn’t woken up. He grabbed his backpack and tiptoed across the floorboards and he cracked open the door just enough to slip himself out of the room before he closed the door again.
He made his way down the stairs and, aware that Bobby had told him not to touch his books, he went into the previously unseen room that happened to be the kitchen…he was not alone it seemed as Sam was sat, lost in his own thoughts, at the table in his own pyjamas.
“Hi Sam.” He said as quietly as he could, but Sam still jumped in surprise.
“Harry! What are you doing up?” He asked.
Harry looked away and shrugged.
“Nightmares?” Sam guessed.
Harry nodded.
“Me too.” Sam told him simply and Harry looked up at him quickly and he noticed the familiar sight of black bags under Sam’s eyes. He had his own black bags that stared back at him every time he looked into a mirror. Sam was telling him the truth. His older brother had nightmares of his own.
Harry sat opposite Sam and looked at his hands on the table top.
“Do you want to talk about it, Harry?” Sam asked and Harry shook his head vehemently. “It might help. It did for me when I was having nightmares. Dean finally made me tell him and it did make me feel better. I still have the nightmares, but not as often as I used to and they’re not as bad as they used to be either.”
“Why do you have nightmares?” Harry asked softly and Sam swallowed hard.
He’d been doing a lot of research since he’d found out about Harry’s possible abuse just hours ago and every single site he’d found and looked at had stressed the importance of trust. He knew that Harry was unlikely to trust him unless he trusted Harry first, which was difficult given the situation, but he took in a deep, calm breath and prepared to give Harry the edited version of what had happened to him and to Jessica while they’d been in Palo Alto. If he made the first move and extended the olive branch, then Harry was much more likely to take that branch and offer it back.
“I was in Stanford university from the age of eighteen to twenty-two, I…I had a girlfriend, Jess. It would be a year in November since she died and I guess it’s still affecting me, you know? There was a fire and…and Jess got caught in it. I couldn’t get her out. I can still see her, I can smell it and in my nightmares, I’m standing on the outside of it all, looking in and I’m screaming at myself to get her out, to save her, but I couldn’t.”
Harry’s soft, tiny hands reached out and wormed their way into his own, holding them, not saying anything, not telling him lies about how he couldn’t have done anything more than he’d already done, not tell him that Jess was in a better place or that the past was the past and he had to let go. Harry just sat there, saying nothing, holding his hands gently, just giving silent comfort and Sam took another deep, cleansing breath…this is what he’d needed, to be able to tell someone who wouldn’t judge him and who would just sit and listen without saying anything. He didn’t want empty words and he guessed that that was exactly what Harry needed too.
“That driver didn’t really do anything to me.” Harry said softly into the silence. “I didn’t really understand what was going on. I’ve never heard of rape, so I’m not sure if he did do that or not. He really frightened me though. I started getting uncomfortable when we were already driving. He was asking me how old I was, he…he thought I was younger than I actually am because I look younger. He got agitated when I said I was fourteen. That’s when I realised that maybe something was wrong. Then about a mile from the Roadhouse, he…he stopped the truck. I didn’t know what was going on or what he was doing and he started saying stupid things, like how naïve and innocent I was and how it made him hard or something. I didn’t understand that either.” Harry rambled, staring at his hands unable to look at Sam and unable to stop the flow of his thoughts now that the words had started tumbling from his mouth. “He…he just jumped on me and he got a leg over my waist and he got hold of both my wrists in his one hand and he got a roll of duct tape out of the glove compartment and covered my mouth with it. I panicked when he started tugging at my jeans. I got…I got my one leg free and I kicked him in the face repeatedly. I was just so scared of him. He was unconscious when I turned the key to start the engine and open the door. I just ran all the way to the Roadhouse. So he didn’t really do anything to me and I don’t want to be in trouble for kicking him unconscious.”
“It was self-defence, Harry. You won’t get into trouble for that.” Sam told him seriously. “He didn’t rape you, but it’s obvious that he was going to.”
“What is rape?” Harry asked him, looking up at him with those wide, green eyes.
“A disgusting crime committed by disgusting people.” Sam told him. “But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Me and Dean and Dad will protect you and look after you, we’re not going to let anyone hurt you or take you away from us.”
“Promise?” Harry asked him insecurely.
“Yeah, I do. But what about your school?”
Harry bit his lip and turned away. “They never told me my real name or my real parentage. They would have known, I’m sure of it. They knew my parents really well as they went to school there themselves, they would have known that they weren’t able to have their own baby and that they were searching for surrogates, which means that they want me with my non-blood relatives for some reason. I have my guesses, but I can’t be certain, but I only found out about me being a surrogate baby a few days ago. I didn’t even know about my own family! They didn’t want me to know about you. If I went back to the school now, then I’m sure that they’d send me back to them.”
“Them?” Sam asked, but Harry just shook his head.
“I don’t want to talk about them.” Harry said and Sam noticed that Harry’s hand went unconsciously to his ribs. He was hurt more than he was letting on.
“Are you injured anywhere else, Harry? We can help, you know. We have some knowledge of treating wounds and even making bruising better. I know Dad want’s to sort out your wrists later today. It’ll be better if you mention them to us, Harry. We want to help.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“That’s true, we don’t know you yet and you don’t know us either, but we want to get to know you, Harry and I hope that you want to get to know us too.” Sam insisted and Harry’s heart thudded in his chest. This was everything that he’d ever wanted and it was being offered to him on a plate and he wanted it. He wanted it so badly that his hands tightened on Sam’s.
“What were you studying at Stanford?” Harry asked curiously, changing the subject before he could get overwhelmed by his emotions and do something ridiculous, such a burst into grateful tears that his newly found family actually wanted to get to know the real him.
“Law.” Sam said and he loved that Harry’s eyes widened with astonishment and respect.
“That’s amazing. I know that being a law student is very difficult. I had career booklets and things at school, though our formal talks about what we want to do in the future won’t be until next year. We had to pick different electives at the end of our second year based on what we wanted to do when we were older. I chose Care of Creatures as one elective and it is one of my favourite subjects. I think I’d want to do something with animals, I’ve always had a special affinity with them and I’d love to go on Safari or something to see them in the wild! I love the more unusual animals, I’ve never really been drawn to cats or dogs as pets. They’re so mundane and common! I wanted something much different.”
“What did you get instead?” Sam asked with a smile at Harry’s excitement, thinking logically that maybe he had a snake or some other kind of reptile, maybe even a spider or a rat.
Harry grinned at him. “An owl.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “An owl, seriously?”
Harry nodded. “Hedwig. She’s a snowy owl and she follows me everywhere. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown up yet, though it is a way to fly from London to America.”
“She can find you?”
Harry nodded. “She can always find me, she’s amazing.”
“I can’t wait to see Dean’s face when he realises you have an owl.” Sam laughed.
“Some of the animals I’ve already seen.” Harry said with a grimace, thinking of Aragog, the basilisk, the merpeople and the Hungarian horntail, not to mention the sphinx and the blast ended Skrewts. “It’s unbelievable.”
“I know that feeling.” Sam told him with a secret smile and Harry laughed before he went digging in his backpack for a bottle of water that he still had left. “You thirsty? Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m okay, I’ve still got this left.” Harry said happily, shaking the half full bottle.
“Are you hungry? I’m not too good at cooking, I know the bare basics, but I’m sure I can get something together.”
“How do you not know how to cook?” Harry asked.
“You’re fourteen, how do you know how to cook?” Sam asked in reply.
Harry shrugged. “I just do. How do you not know how to cook in your twenties?”
“It was never really a problem, we’d just go to a diner if we were hungry. Though Bobby makes the best chilli.”
The shy little smile that Harry gave him made Sam feel all sorts of protective and like an actual big brother. He wondered if this was how Dean always felt about him and if it was, it was no wonder that he was always so worried about him. He sighed as he realised that Dean was going to be a million times worse than usual with Harry around. Harry who didn’t know what rape was and was covered in bruises from what he was becoming more and more convinced was actually long term abuse.
He and Harry stayed down in the kitchen, talking and laughing quietly until it was getting light out. Sam made sure to stay away from any heavy subjects and rapidly came to understand that any conversation to do with animals brought forth a burning passion in Harry that made him smile to see as Harry became animated and chatty for the first time. He wasn’t the painfully shy little boy who ducked his head and avoided eye contact when animals were being discussed. Harry yawned during one of their comfortable silences, resting his head against the table.
“Why don’t you go back upstairs?” Sam asked.
“I don’t want to wake anyone up.” Harry told him as he closed his eyes and crossed his legs on the chair, curling up almost like a cat.
“You won’t.” Sam said a little unconvincingly. He knew that his Dad would probably wake up the moment that Harry opened the bedroom door. He was surprised that Harry hadn’t woken him by coming down in the first place regardless of how tired his Dad had been.
Harry didn’t answer him and Sam smiled as he realised that Harry was asleep in the chair. Shaking his head he went up to his bedroom to get his laptop, noticing that Dean was sprawled over his bed, mouth parted as he breathed deeply, the thin bed cover was twisted all over the place as he slept in just his boxer shorts and despite all of that, his right hand was still under his pillow, no doubt holding the handle of his hunting knife. Just in case.
He shook his head as he made his way back down the stairs and booted up his laptop. He’d done some more research during the night after he and Dean had gone up to bed, but he was now even more determined to do research on what little he’d found out by talking to his little brother.
He lost track of time as Harry slept peacefully opposite him, but it was around half six in the morning when his Dad came into the kitchen and he relaxed his shoulders upon seeing Harry at the table.
“How long he been down here?” John asked as he checked on Harry.
“He came down at just gone four in the morning. I told him to go back up to bed, but he didn’t want to wake you up and he fell asleep at the table not long after, so I left him.”
“Why were you awake?” John asked with narrowed eyes.
“Nightmares, about Jess.” Sam sighed. “Harry was having nightmares too, about the driver. He wasn’t raped, but the bastard tried.”
“Watch your mouth.” John told him and Sam rolled his eyes. He was the only one not allowed to swear, if Dean did, he got a warning look, sometimes a verbal comment if he carried on excessively, but the minute a profanity crossed his lips, it was a straight out warning to stop.
“So he spoke to you about it?”
“Yeah, I was reading online and it said that he would not trust anyone until we showed trust in him first. I told him about Jess and how it still gave me nightmares and then he came right out and told me about what happened in that truck. Harry repeatedly kicked the guy in the face until he was unconscious before running to the Roadhouse. That’s how he got away and he’s worried about getting into trouble for doing it.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t…?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, he told me about the attack in detail. He didn’t know what rape was, Dad. He didn’t know what was going on and the driver first frightened him when he asked after his age and was apparently agitated when Harry told him he was fourteen. The guy then stopped about a mile from the Roadhouse and said disgusting things to Harry that he didn’t understand and then attacked him, pinning his hips down with one of his legs and gripping his wrists tight as he used the other hand to slap duct tape over his mouth. Harry panicked when he started tugging on his jeans and that’s when he started kicking him and he didn’t stop until he was unconscious.”
“He’s too naïve and unaware of dangers for his own good.” John sighed.
“Don’t let him hear you calling him naïve or innocent. That driver said those things to him before saying that Harry made him hard and then attacking him. He didn’t know what that meant either.”
John scrubbed a hand over his face before switching on the coffee machine to make some much needed coffee. He’d woken up and the first thing he’d done was look over to check on Harry, only to find his bed empty and his newly acquired son nowhere to be seen. He’d panicked a little and come straight down the stairs to find him after realising that Harry’s backpack was also gone.
Finding out that the fourteen year old Harry didn’t know what rape was or what a man meant when he was hard also threw him for the loop. Was he the one that was supposed to have that talk with Harry? Dean had naturally found out on his own and all he’d had to do was remind him to take condoms with him…Sammy, well he didn’t know how things had gone down with Sammy but he assumed that Dean had given him the talk when he was a teenager but Sam had been more interested in books and his school work than hooking up with girls like Dean had, so he didn’t need to say anything to him. Harry it seemed was even less interested in that sort of thing than even Sam had been.
“Did he mention anything about those people he lives with?”
“No, but he…he didn’t mention their names or anything, he just said ‘them’ but he doesn’t want to go back to his school because he’s terrified that the school will send him back to ‘them’, he then told me that he didn’t want to talk about ‘them’ when I asked about it. The more he says the more I’m worried that they’ve hurt him really badly.”
“I’m sure of it.” John said as he filled a mug with coffee and placed it in front of Sam before pouring another mug. “The way he winces and pulls pained faces, I’m sure he has injuries that he’s trying to hide.”
“What can we do? He’s not just going to let us look.” Sam said.
“Might be the worst possible thing to do, but I’m going to have to make him show me where he’s injured. I wouldn’t let you boys hide your injuries either, and I won’t let him. If he has any cuts and they get infected, he could die from them. That’s unacceptable. When I deal with his wrists, I’ll see if I can’t coax him to show me himself, if he doesn’t, I’ll press him.”
“I don’t think he’ll respond well to it.” Sam warned seriously.
“What else do you expect me to do, Sam?” John demanded quietly, trying not to wake Harry up as he argued over his head. “He isn’t going to start trusting us overnight and these injuries he has could need immediate attention. We can’t afford to wait the months it’s going to take to get him to trust us to the extent of getting him to show us by himself. What if his ribs are broken and they pierce a lung or if he has an infected cut? If his face is this bad what do you think the rest of his body is going to look like?” John demanded in a furious whisper.
“I know, but doing this might ruin his trust completely!” Sam argued back just as furiously in a harsh whisper.
He didn’t want to fight with his Dad, he never did, but he wanted to help Harry in any way possible. He knew that backing an already hurt and abused boy into a corner when he was in an unknown place with no escape, surrounded by people that he didn’t really know all that well was a very, very bad idea. He was worried that his Dad was going to make everything a hundred times worse and that this would send Harry running.
“It might.” John admitted slightly defensively. He really didn’t appreciate the blunt statement about this possibly destroying any and all trust that Harry had in him. “But at least he’d be safe and he’d be cared for. However, I think that though he’ll be unhappy with it, that once he’s been cared for and we show him that we won’t hurt him or act like those people, then he’ll understand that it was for his own good.”
“Dean isn’t going to like this either.” Sam told him, a scowl that Dean fondly referred to as Sam’s ‘bitch face’ aimed at him. John could see the doubts that Sam had clearly running through his eyes and across his expressions.
“I’m hoping to get Dean on side, you too.” John answered brusquely. “I can’t do this alone. I’m crap at this sort of stuff and you both know it. I can order him to show me, but it’s the aftercare that I’m not going to be good at and he’s going to need it. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid hated me after this, but I’m going to do it regardless, Sam. His health needs to come first and I can’t let him walk around with multiple injuries.”
Sam sighed and looked at Harry’s still bruised face squashed to the table. He nodded.
“Yeah, we’ll both be there. I just hate the thought of upsetting him so soon after meeting him.” Sam sighed reluctantly. His Dad had made up his mind already and he was going to do it with or without them. He realised that it would be better if they all stood together and helped one another out instead of bickering and arguing about it, which could in turn make the whole process even worse for Harry. And despite everything, they needed to do what was best for Harry and Sam was determined to support his little brother through this ordeal.
“I know you don’t want to upset him. I don’t want to upset him either, Sammy, but I’m not going to leave him to suffer in pain if he has been abused.” John said determinedly. He was not going to leave his boy in pain, he could no more leave Harry to suffer than he could Dean or Sam. He wouldn’t do it. “I don’t want him remaining with that pain when I can damn well do something about it. I reckon that it’s better to do this now while he’s not so used to us and we haven’t got much of his trust to break; then after we’ve got him sorted out, he can get used to us without being in so much pain.”
Sam nodded. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t like the thought of Harry being in pain either and he didn’t have a better idea on how to handle this sort of situation. He just prayed that it didn’t make everything worse.
“Morning.” Bobby greeted before he realised that Harry was sleeping. “How long has he been sleeping there?” He asked in a drastically quietened voice.
“Only an hour.” Sam told him, glad for the conversation change. “We both had nightmares and he came down half an hour after I did.”
“He’s going to be sore if he stays there like that.” Bobby said.
“He’s curled up on the chair.” John said with a smirk.
“He’s tiny, is why.” Dean said as he walked in fully dressed. “You alright, Sammy?” He asked when he saw his brother in his pyjamas looking like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Yeah, I’m gonna go grab a shower and then I’ll be back.”
Sam left the kitchen and Dean took the seat next to Harry, staring at him as he slept folded into the chair and resting on the table.
“Is he alright?” He asked John and Bobby.
“Nightmares, the both of them.” John sighed.
“Aw, damn it.” Dean sighed. “I didn’t hear Sam. I usually hear him and sit up with him.”
“Harry kept him company.”
“What was he having nightmares about?” Dean asked looking at Harry’s relaxed face. “I know Sam’s was probably over Jessica.”
“Yeah it was and Harry was having nightmares about the truck driver.”
“I swear if I ever meet that bastard I’ll make him suffer.” Dean swore.
“Was he actually…you know.” Bobby asked uncomfortably.
“No.” John shook his head. “Sam was talking to him about it and though he was attacked and the bastard tried to do it, Harry kicked him repeatedly in the face until he was unconscious before running to the Roadhouse.”
Dean grinned at that. “Atta boy, Harry.” He said quietly to the sleeping Harry.
Bobby snorted. “True Winchester blood in that one. Seems that stubborn streak is just innate in all you boys.”
“Go and get breakfast, Dean.” John told him, though he was smiling at their comments to the sleeping Harry.
Dean stood up, stretched and snatched the Impala keys.
“Anyone got any preference?”
“Just get anything and don’t forget to get something for Harry. God knows the kid could use some feeding up.” John told him. “Get him some fruit and such, kids are supposed to eat that stuff.” He added as an afterthought.
Dean nodded and walked up the stairs to hammer on the bathroom door to ask Sam what he wanted before he came back down as quietly as he could and left for the nearest diner or café, leaving John and Bobby to drink coffee and talk quietly over Harry’s head.
Only ten minutes after Dean had left the salvage yard, Sam was back in the kitchen after a quick shower and the three men were startled when Harry suddenly jerked awake with a grunt and almost toppled from the chair he was sat in.
“Easy, Harry. You okay?” John asked him, trying to steady him by holding the tilting chair and setting it back on four legs.
“Where’s Sam?” Harry asked, rubbing his eyes with his hand.
“Right here, are you okay?” Sam asked, indescribably pleased that Harry had immediately asked for him.
Harry nodded as he looked at Sam who was stood behind him, dressed for the day with a coffee mug in hand. It reminded him that he needed to get dressed himself.
“I’m just going to get dressed.”
“Dean’s gone to get breakfast, he’ll be back soon. If you wait until after breakfast you can grab a shower.”
Harry blinked at that reasoning and then nodded. He accepted the glass of water from Bobby with a quiet ‘thank you’ and Sam sat next to him and they struck up a conversation about animals, which Harry seemed to enjoy a lot as he became very animated and excited. It made John smile to see it. If anyone could have gotten through to Harry and drawn him out of his shell so quickly and easily, it would have been his Sammy.
“So you actually know how to ride a horse?” Sam asked in astonishment.
Harry nodded with a grin. Of course he hadn’t actually ridden a horse, but then he couldn’t exactly tell them that he’d ridden a hippogriff and a centaur. “Yeah, riding is easy. I’ve done it barebacked several times now.”
John almost choked on a mouthful of coffee at the hidden euphemism of that statement and he tried to cover up the fact that he’d inhaled his coffee into his lungs by coughing harshly and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Harry looked at him with such innocent concern as he almost choked, Sam and Bobby laughing at him silently behind Harry’s back, that John berated himself for ever thinking that Harry could have meant that other thing.
Dean didn’t take too much longer after that debacle before he arrived back with a lot of noise and he grinned as he saw them all waiting.
“Here you go, breakfast is served.” He declared as he dumped several large paper bags on the kitchen table.
Harry just stared at him and Sam nudged him. “You get used to it after a while, but he’s spent too much time with his car…it’s all those exhaust fumes.”
“Shut up, Sammy.” Dean told him easily, but Harry had to smother a chuckle. “Here, this is yours.”
Harry took the Styrofoam box and opened it. He didn’t care what he was eating, he was just hungry. He did seem to have a lot of fruit though, in fact he was the only one with any fruit, he smiled at that. He used the little plastic fork to eat happily, drinking his water as he did so, listening to the conversation at the table, but not really joining in.
Their containers were thrown straight into the bin once they were done and Harry was stretching, just about to ask Bobby if he could please have a shower, when John approached him. Harry sucked in a deep breath as he realised exactly what was about to happen.
“Come upstairs, Harry. I’ll show you where everything is, then afterwards, we need to talk.”
Harry swallowed nervously and he nodded. He’d had a feeling, right from the off, that John wouldn’t let him keep secrets, that they wouldn’t be tolerated and the pit in his belly grew as he realised that it was going to happen today. He was going to be forced into telling some of his darkest secrets, most particularly about the Dursleys and exactly why he didn’t want to go back to school. It was going to be a difficult couple of hours, especially as Sam had told him that John wanted to wrap up his wrists. He wondered how they would all react to seeing his chest and back, the most bruised areas of his body, and the open wound in his one shoulder. It was not going to be a happy or pleasant talk, that he already knew.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ X
Harry had been allowed to shower first because the wrappings that were around his wrists weren’t allowed to get wet. Apparently the tight support bandages were going to help heal his bruises quicker as well as make them feel less painful when he moved them.
“Right, now I know that you have other injuries that you’re hiding.” John told him seriously. “Shirt off.”
Harry swallowed and his shoulders automatically hunched to protect himself, his bad shoulder twinging painfully with the movement.
“It’s alright, Harry. No one here will judge you.” Sam insisted, his face showing nothing but kind and open honesty.
Harry took in a deep breath and though he had known that this was coming, he found himself freezing, unable to move.
“We just want to help.” Dean told him when Harry still didn’t move.
“We know it’s a lot of pressure, but we really can help and we want to help, Harry.” Sam added, trying desperately to support Harry now that this fiasco had started.
“It’s just…” Harry trailed off and looked at his hands. “It’s bad.”
“We’ve noticed the cuts on your fingers and the bruises at your wrists. We can still see the faint bruise on your face, which was a lot clearer at Ellen’s, and we couldn’t hope to miss the scabs on your lips. We know what’s going on, Harry, so just let us see and we’ll fix you up.” John told him.
“I don’t want to.” Harry said quietly.
“I know you don’t, but you’re going to.” John said sternly, leaving no room for argument.
Harry looked at his knees. He was sat on the settee in the living room cum library and there was a large, very large, first aid kit open on the coffee table. Sam was sat next to him, John was crouched in front of him and Dean was standing behind John while Bobby was on the other settee sorting out dosages of painkillers after Harry had told him that he wasn’t allergic to anything that he knew of.
“Shirt off.” John repeated firmly and Harry knew that they weren’t going to give in and the last thing he wanted was to have John wrestle with him and forcibly take his shirt off. He bit his lip and clenched his hands into fists.
“You can shout and rage after we’ve patched you up.” Dean promised him. “Hell, I’ll even help you, but first things first, let’s see why you keep touching your fingers to your right side ribs.”
Feeling trapped and cornered, Harry carefully took off his jumper, making sure not to expose any part of his skin, and he immediately felt a little relief from the stifling summer heat, before he toyed with the hem of his long sleeved shirt.
“Jeez, you must have been melting, dude.” Dean told him, his biceps on clear display thanks to the thin tee-shirt he was wearing.
Harry frowned and nibbled his lip. Maybe this would be a good thing after all, once they’d all seen him, he wouldn’t have to continue wearing the jumpers anymore and he wouldn’t feel like he was dying from overheating due to the summer heat. It was a lot hotter here than it was in Britain and he wasn’t used to the dry heat of America at all, let alone while he was layered up and wearing a jumper to keep his scabs and bruises covered.
He took courage from their honesty and their support and he slowly lifted the hem of his shirt and he heard the hisses and the lone curse from Dean as he popped his head out of his shirt and put it in his lap, playing with it so that he didn’t have to look up at anyone.
“The people you live with did this to you?” Sam demanded as he brushed his large fingers gently over a sickly greenish-yellow patch of skin on Harry’s left side. It couldn’t even be called a bruise, it was just too big and covered most of Harry’s upper body and all over his left side, right down to his hip and around his front and back.
“They’re just bruises, you can’t help bruises.” Harry said angrily as he clenched his hands into his discarded shirt, still not looking up at any of them. He regretted taking his shirt off and he wanted nothing more than to jam it back on and hide.
“That isn’t a bruise.” John said as he pressed the tip of his thick, rough finger into a shallow cut on Harry’s collar bone. Petunia had been aiming a slap at his cheek, but he’d ducked and dodged away, her one false, manicured nail had just caught his collarbone and the scab usually came off when he showered, which is why he still had it, but it was clean and healing.
“It’s only a little cut.” Harry burst out. “It’ll heal on its own.”
“This one won’t.” Dean said from behind him and he pressed his own finger into a ghastly looking cut on Harry’s right shoulder.
Harry flinched as it was touched. He thought that that one was left over from the graveyard battle and he shivered. A few of his deeper cuts from the graveyard had yet to heal almost three weeks later. Madam Pomfrey had healed all the cuts and bruises on his front, but he hadn’t told her about the ones on his back. They were some sort of sick punishment to himself for urging Cedric to take the cup with him.
“Dad, this one needs stitches.” Dean told John, peering closely at the deep wound.
John sighed and stood up, coming to see for himself. Harry wished that he’d either used a glamour to cover the damn things before he’d left Hogwarts or at the very least hidden it better.
“It will need stitches, Harry. What did this?”
Harry remained silent. He could hardly say that it was likely from a chunk of gravestone that had caught him after Voldemort had blasted it to smithereens after missing his head with the spell.
John sighed as he stared sadly at the state of Harry’s tiny body. He was bruised to hell and back and had small cuts all over him, though the gash on his back seemed to be the worst, he was worried about potential broken ribs. It looked like someone had repeatedly punched or kicked Harry in the chest, any one of a blow like that could cave in a rib.
“Sam, get the alcohol.” John said as he came back around to face Harry. “This is going to hurt.”
Harry snorted. “Yeah, because I’m not used to that already.” He said sullenly.
John’s hand clenched in his anger at the bastards who’d done this to a fourteen year old boy. To his fourteen year old boy. He took the alcohol from Sam and a wad of clean gauze, he tipped the rubbing alcohol onto the gauze and then slapped it over the worst of Harry’s cuts. Except for his shoulders jumping a little at the sudden move and a sharp inhale of surprise, Harry didn’t react at all.
“Dude, come on!” Dean said as he ruffled Harry’s hair. “Sammy cries like a baby when he has to be cleaned with alcohol.”
“I do not!” Sam denied.
“He does. Every time.” Dean whispered loudly to Harry. “I remember one time, he fell over in a parking lot and took the skin off of both his knees and both his palms and when Dad cleaned them off with alcohol he bawled for two hours afterwards!”
“I was four!” Sam told him angrily.
“Details.” Dean told him and he winked at Sam when Harry chuckled at them.
John focused on cleaning the wound, rubbing in a circular motion to hopefully get out any and all bacteria before it could fester, though the wound started to bleed quickly as it was cleaned. He used four pads of gauze before he was happy that he’d cleaned every inch of the cut before he moved on to the other cuts, leaving the one he’d just done to air dry for a minute before he directed Sam to take over the cleaning of the smaller cuts and got Dean to help him as he took the threaded needle from Bobby.
“This is going to hurt worse, Harry.” John warned.
Harry nodded his understanding and Dean walked around the settee and knelt in front of him, holding around his neck and pushing down on his shoulders to keep him still.
“Grip your hands into my shirt, Harry.” Dean told him.
“What?”
“Grab my shirt on either side and clench it. It’s to stop your hands from moving and disturbing the stitches.”
Harry nodded slowly, as if he were in a daze, but he did as Dean had told him to and two, tiny hands held him on either side of his body. Dean readied himself and moved his hands slightly to be better able to hold Harry in position before he nodded to his Dad.
John didn’t give Harry any warning as he carefully pushed the sterilised needle though Harry’s skin and other than hissing loudly through his teeth in pain and flinching, which Dean controlled as best as he could by holding Harry down, Harry didn’t make any sort of fuss. Those tiny hands on his sides however would clench every time the needle was pushed through his skin and Dean tried his best to comfort Harry through the ordeal by talking to him and telling him how well he was doing. Anything to try and make this even the slightest bit more bearable for Harry.
Stitching up the wound in his son’s back slowly, wiping his hands on a towel he had on the floor beside his knee to clean them of blood so that he could do a good enough job, John had plenty of time to think and get angrier at the people who had done this to his boy. He really, really needed a hunt to distract him, otherwise he was going to go and hunt down those people and repay them in kind for what they’d done to Harry, his own son. Mary’s son.
It seemed to take an age for him to put in the stitches to the hideous wound that Harry had suffered and seemed to have been living with for a while. John would never forgive the bastards who’d given such a wound to his son. His son who was timid, shy, about half the height and weight that he should have been and wanted nothing more than to be a vet.
Once he was done and the last stitch had been tied off, John wiped Harry’s shoulder and back of blood and taped a clean square of gauze over the stitched line. He dipped his hands into the bowl of warm water and washed his hands and arms of blood and he determinedly kept his mind blank as he checked on Sam, who was cleaning the little cuts and grazes that littered the length of Harry’s small body while Dean was searching in the first aid boxes for Band-Aids to cover the smaller cuts that Harry had.
If he thought too much about this then he really was going to hunt down the people who had done this to Harry and the people who had allowed this to happen to him too. He didn’t believe that there wasn’t one single person who hadn’t noticed the glaring signs of Harry’s home abuse. He’d noticed the pain and discomfort his son was in from their very first meeting, he refused to believe that there wasn’t one single person who hadn’t noticed, especially as Harry went to a boarding school. Unless the school were abusing Harry too, John’s fist clenched tight. That would explain why Harry didn’t want to go back.
He went back to checking on Harry’s body and he sighed inwardly, he couldn’t do much for the bruising, but he did crouch down in front of his son once again and he checked to make sure that no ribs were broken, but without an x-ray, he wouldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but he couldn’t feel anything that caused alarm bells to ring. There were no sudden dips or bulges, and Harry had no problems breathing or holding a deep breath for several moments when he was instructed to do so, so he was happy to leave Harry’s ribs alone, though how very thin Harry was did concern him. It made him think that it probably wasn’t just physical abuse that Harry had suffered at those people’s hands.
“Do those people feed you less than you needed?” He asked as he checked on Harry’s arms for any cuts he or Sam might have missed.
“Something like that.” Harry admitted quietly.
“Don’t avoid answering the question. What do they do?” John asked. “Be straight up and frank here, Harry.”
“They starve me for days on end and lock me up when they’re sick of seeing me.” Harry said angrily. “Is that frank enough for you?”
John almost dropped the bottle of alcohol. His free hand clenched so tightly into a fist that his blunt nails dug into his palm and he had to remind himself to breathe.
“And the bruises?” Sam, the only one who seemed to be able to speak at the moment, asked gently.
“It started when I was really young, I don’t remember how or why, but it started with just smacks or a fist clenching in my hair…it progressed over the years to slaps and shoves and then to punches and the use of objects.”
“Objects like what?” Sam asked.
Harry shrugged. “A belt, a chair, a frying pan. Anything that came to hand first, really. The day I left it was a glass of water at my head.”
“These bruises, how did you get them?” John asked, touching the worst of the bruising at Harry’s ribs.
“Dudley, their son. He’s older than me by several years. I’ve been his plaything for so long. He even started playing something he dubbed ‘Harry hunting’ and him and his stupid friends would chase me and beat the shit out of me when they found me.”
“How old were you?”
Harry shrugged. “I was a little kid when they started doing that, about five or six, and he was a teenager. He was a trained boxer too.”
“How old is he now?” John demanded.
“He’s just turned twenty-six.” Harry shrugged again.
“He’s older than Sam, just a year younger than I am, and he kicked the shit out of you and gave you these bruises?”
Harry sighed and played with his fingers. “He’s a waste of space…quite literally.” Harry grinned nastily. “He’s wider across than he is tall. He can’t catch me anymore, he can’t even run. He does like pushing me down the stairs though. He likes catching me off guard when I’m sleeping and he…he gave me those bruises on the same day that I left.”
“And his parents?” John asked.
“My Mother Lily’s sister, Petunia and her vile Husband, Vernon. They’ve never liked me…they hated it less when they opened the front door to find a fifteen month old me on their doorstep.”
“You were left on their doorstep?” Sam asked in disgust.
“Yep, Halloween night too and I was wrapped in a single blanket according to them. I’m lucky to have survived the madman and the fire and then being dumped on a doorstep in the cold overnight.”
John was coming to understand a lot more about Harry the more he talked about his past and his thoughts on the matter. He obviously had issues and they all seemed to stem from his supposed Aunt, Uncle and cousin. It wasn’t any wonder that Harry didn’t see those people as his family and didn’t want to go back to them or to his school for that matter, the school which had done nothing about the abuse and would apparently send him straight back to the people who had hurt him and treated him so badly for all these years.
“Get these down you.” Bobby said as he handed over a glass of water and a handful of pills. “It’s dead on the hour, once you get those down you, you might feel drowsy, so if you need to sleep, sleep. I’ll wake you up in time for the next dose.”
“I don’t need them.” Harry said stubbornly.
“I don’t care, you’ll take them and you’ll keep taking them for today at least, then we’ll see about tomorrow.” Bobby told him.
John watched as Harry looked at the palmful of pills before he pouted at them as if they had done him a personal wrong. All four of them smiled as they watched him, at least until he threw every single pill into his mouth at once and gulped down the water until they were all gone.
John packed up the medical supplies and Dean went to tip away the bowl of bloodied water and he took the bloodied towels with him. Sam was distracting Harry so easily it was as if they had known each other for years instead of just a day. They were talking about animals again, a topic that John was rapidly understanding was one of Harry’s favourites as he knew a hell of a lot about them. They were talking about something called Hedwig, which seemed to make Harry incredibly happy.
“What’s a Hedwig?” Dean asked as he came back into the room.
“Harry’s pet.” Sam said with a secret grin at Harry, who chuckled.
“Who calls their pet Hedwig?” Dean asked as he shoved Sam as he walked past.
“Hedwig’s special.” Harry said with so much love John might have thought that Hedwig was a person and not an animal.
“Oh yeah, is it a she?” Dean asked with a wink and Harry cocked his head to the side.
“Yeah, she is.”
“You know, you shouldn’t substitute animals for people. It’s not right.”
“Dean!” Sam chastised.
“Animals have never beaten or starved me.” Harry answered before taking another drink of water, looking consideringly into the glass as he mulled over his thoughts before voicing them. “I like animals more than people.” He said easily and the simplicity of that statement saddened them all.
“Why don’t you tell Dean what Hedwig is, Harry?” Sam encouraged with a smile that was forced.
Harry smiled gently. “She’s an owl. I’ve had her for almost four years now.”
“An owl?” John asked incredulously.
Harry nodded. “A snowy owl. She likes following me around.”
“Where is she now?” Dean asked him curiously.
“She’ll be around.” Harry nodded. “Probably hunting. I let her fly free back in London, so it’ll take her a while to catch up to me, but she always does.”
“Is she trained like a carrier pigeon?” Bobby asked. “She carry letters and messages?”
Harry nodded. “I gave her a letter the day I let her go, asking my Dad’s oldest friends why they’d never told me that I was a surrogate baby or that I had two middle names and not just one. I’m still waiting for their reply.”
“That must be a hell of an expensive bird. Training like that is unheard of. Are you sure she can find you?”
Harry nodded seriously. If Hedwig could find Sirius every time without fail when he was on the run and constantly moving around, she could find him here in America.
“She did cost a lot of money, but she’s worth it. She was my first ever friend.”
“What about school?” Dean asked.
Harry looked away and sighed. “No one ever really bothered with me in school. Who wants to be friends with the short, skinny kid wearing baggy clothes that were over a decade old, who never opened his mouth and spent most of his time hiding in a small corner of the playground or escaping to the library? Not to mention that all the kids around the neighbourhood I grew up in were too afraid of Dudley and his gang to come near me. They told all the other kids what would happen to them if they so much as looked at me. Dudley would beat them up too if he saw anyone talking to me so I was always alone.”
“Why didn’t anyone do anything about him?” Sam asked.
Harry scoffed. “He was the perfect child, the apple of his parents’ eye, of course it couldn’t be him doing all those naughty things, not their precious son. No, it was much easier to blame their freak of a nephew who no one went near because he was deranged and abnormal. They spread so many lies about me that even they started believing in them themselves. They even told the neighbours that the school I actually went to was a secure centre for incurably criminal boys.”
Dean laughed at that. “You? Incurably criminal?” He asked with a grin. “I’ve spent a day with you and I know that’s not true.”
“Everyone believed it and they started treating me like a criminal, one woman even called the police because I passed in front of her garden gate once. They all believed that I was mentally subnormal and that I was aggressively violent. Hedwig was the only one who would even come near me in the summer.”
“What about at the boarding school, away from them?” Sam asked.
Harry looked down at his lap and he smiled. “I have two best friends. Ron and Hermione, though…though they haven’t actually bothered to contact me at all this summer. They usually do, but this summer is different and I’m worried about what it means.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Harry.” Sam tried to sooth him.
Harry nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. Ron had turned on him during the tournament and had only come back around once he’d beaten the first task…he’d only come back around once the rest of the school had and though Hermione had been there for him throughout, the news that Cedric was dead and Voldemort was back and after his head was a lot to take in. Could he really blame her if she had decided it was safer to distance herself from him?
He sighed. “I hope so, otherwise the only friend I have is an owl who follows me around.”
Harry touched his wrapped ribs and adjusted the bandages.
“Can I put my shirt back on, please?” He asked quietly, wanting the security of having something to hide himself in.
“Yes, of course.” Sam told him.
Harry almost jumped back into the long sleeved shirt and he wrapped his arms around himself.
“How far you got into that book?” Bobby asked him and Harry smiled at the attempt to make him more comfortable and to change the subject. He accepted the life line and fumbled for his backpack to get the ancient book out carefully, along with his spare notebook.
“Really well! I still can’t understand some words, I’ve only been learning Latin for four years and some of the words are ancient! So ancient that they’ve fallen out of modern use. I can guess, but I want to make sure that I have them right. Can you help me please, Mister Bobby?”
Dean snorted in amusement and Harry ducked his head and frowned at his hands self-consciously, holding the book in his lap.
“Shut up, idjit.” Bobby slapped Dean’s head as he walked past and sat next to Harry. “Show me which words you need help with. God knows it’ll do me some good to speak with someone who has a brain!”
Harry smiled at his lap before he set his notebook and the book up on the coffee table and showed Bobby all of the words that he was having difficulty with. With some of them, he’d guessed correctly, on others he’d mistranslated spectacularly, but Bobby patiently helped him through the translations and pointed out exactly where he’d gone wrong and why.
“Why do you have these sorts of books?” Harry questioned a while later, after Bobby had corrected him again. “Why do you have books that go into detail about the different rituals that ancient people used to ward off their ideals of supposed evil?”
Harry couldn’t help but notice that John, Dean and Sam, who had all stayed in the room with him and Bobby, all tensed up. All three of them. He pretended not to notice as he made a show of reading the next page of the book.
“You don’t believe that this sort of evil could have existed?” Bobby questioned him and Harry thought about that question hard before he looked up to answer, already shaking his head.
“No. I believe that they thought that there was evil around them, but that they didn’t know what it was or how to label it, so they slapped this word, kakodaimon, on everything. It’s ancient Greek again, but to my understanding it translates to evil or malevolent spirit. A demon. If you acted out of the norm, you were a demon, if you had seizures or a headache, you were a demon, if you had nightmares or even a nosebleed, then you were a demon.” Harry said as he frowned at the book in his lap as he read on a little further, the book suddenly reverting back to Latin. “Any murder or crime, it was the work of demons because they just didn’t know what else to call it. Humans couldn’t possibly be that evil, could they? These horrific deeds couldn’t possibly have been done by humans. They scapegoated everyone they could, gave them a free pass to act how they wanted as long as they blamed demon possession afterwards. All ancient texts are fraught with legends of demons and spirits and witches, just to scapegoat human behaviour. I mean, take the witch burnings for example. Someone got it into their head that supposed witchcraft was linked to the devil and they justified killing all of those people because they decreed that witchcraft went hand in hand with devil worship, which was against the ten commandments. They believed that these people were holding shared satanic parties in which they opened the realms of the supernatural by dancing naked and engaging in cannibalistic infanticide. It’s ridiculous! All those innocent people were tortured and killed over what? Because some people thought that they were possessed by demons or were using supernatural powers for evil misdeeds and eating babies? There are even accounts of people being killed on the accusation of witchcraft because of bad weather!”
Harry sighed and tried to get a handle on himself. The witch burnings had been one of the first things he’d read about after learning that he was a wizard. He’d found Hedwig’s name in the same book, but reading about the witch trials from the view of real witches and wizards, it soured something inside him. To know that most of the real witches and wizards had gotten away and that the only people who had died had been innocent Muggles who’s neighbour or enemy had accused of witchcraft. His fist clenched.
“The thought of hunting something like that.” Harry continued, his anger flaring again. “All those innocent people, killed for no reason other than they were accused and tried unfairly and lethally of something so ridiculous as witchcraft just because some idiot somewhere couldn’t rationally understand what he was actually seeing. It makes bile burn in my throat. That someone could be so hateful, so prejudiced against something as to hunt it in such a way.”
“Some things need killing.” Dean told him simply and Harry’s head snapped to him, a look of abject horror on his face.
“What?” He asked breathlessly.
“What he means is that, maybe, throughout history, there was someone who was caught eating a baby or something similar.” Sam tried to explain quickly. “And that’s how it came to be associated with witchcraft. There would be no excuse for doing something like that, so to Dean’s reasoning, that person should be killed for their crimes, like murderers and paedophiles.”
Harry calmed himself down and he nodded. “Maybe. I couldn’t imagine anyone eating a baby, it’s inconceivable to me. I suppose they’d have serious problems, possibly mental health issues. I can understand how, in that sort of rare situation, it would be a shoot first kind of thing. The horror of seeing something like that would likely freeze the rational mind and the subconscious mind would take over and act on instinct and in that situation it would be to protect oneself from the horror in front of them.”
“You sure you’re fourteen?” Bobby asked him with a nudge.
Harry smiled. “I’m fifteen next month if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.” Bobby answered and Harry laughed.
“I just…I really don’t like discrimination for the sake of discrimination. You know, the whole tarring everyone with the same brush and holding a whole group accountable for one person’s actions. It’s always the same. Someone murders someone else and because of it, the entire family is vilified and attacked. Just because one of them is evil, doesn’t mean they all are.”
“You’re too smart for your own good.” Bobby told him. “At least I know why those two are so stupid.” He added, nodding to Sam and Dean.
“Yeah? Well I took all the good looks.” Was Dean’s come back and Harry laughed.
“Does that mean Sam took all the height?” Harry asked.
“Looking at you, he must have.” Dean answered and Harry laughed again.
“Right, I’m gonna get lunch on.”
“Do you want any help?” Harry asked politely.
“In all my years knowing those three, ain’t one of them ever asked if I wanted help.” Bobby answered.
“That’s because you know we’d poison ourselves.” John said with a soft grin.
“Damn right, and I ain’t starting now. You stay here and read your animal books.”
“I’m a good cook.” Harry protested.
“How do you know how to cook?” Dean demanded.
“We had this argument this morning.” Sam said with a grin at Harry.
Harry nodded and he bit his lip. He made a decision and looked up, staring at them all head on as best as he could.
“I’ve been cooking for years.” He said as strongly as he could. “Those people made me cook for them. It started when I was really young, back then I had to stand on a chair to reach the top of the cooker.”
The effect was almost instantaneous as Harry watched his brothers and his Father all go curiously blank, as if they’d gone into a headspace where there was only white noise.
“You definitely ain’t cooking when I’m around.” Bobby said before he went into the kitchen and Harry felt sort of…part disappointed that he couldn’t prove himself and part relieved that he wasn’t going to be forced to cook like he had been at the Dursleys. It felt nice to have someone cook for him for a change. It was different at Hogwarts because of the house elves. The only person who’d ever cooked for him before had been Mrs Weasley and he saw her as close to a Mother as he was ever going to get.
John came and sat next to him and a heavy hand was placed on his good shoulder. It squeezed tight for a moment before it just rested, comfortingly and Harry really, really liked it being there.
“I take it they didn’t take the time to teach you how to actually cook first.” John growled in that rough, gruff voice of his that Harry was coming to associate with John.
Harry shook his head. “No, I burnt myself a lot and if I burnt or undercooked the food I’d get beaten. It was sort of learn how to do it properly as quickly as possible as a way of survivalism.”
“I should have kept up with James and Lily. I should have followed up with you.”
“You didn’t know.” Harry told him gently. “You didn’t know that this was going to happen, you didn’t even know those people or how they’d behave or that my Mum and Dad were dead.”
“If I’d just sent a letter, or even went to collect the old mail from the house once in a while…”
“It isn’t your fault.” Harry said. “What happened, has happened. There’s no guarantee that even if you’d known about me that you’d have known that my parents had died and I’d been sent to live with them because I didn’t know about you. I don’t blame anyone for what happened to me.”
“You should be blaming them!” Dean told him angrily.
Harry sighed and looked down at his hands in his lap.
“You don’t. You’re so forgiving that you really don’t blame them for what they’ve done to you.” Sam said in a sort of shock.
Harry smiled sadly. “I was all but thrust onto them. They never wanted another child, they never wanted anything to do with me and they made sure that I knew it. There was a time when I loved them regardless, when I would have done anything, anything, for some positive acknowledgement, but by the time that I was eight, maybe nine, I came to the realisation that that was never going to happen. They hated me being there, denied me a space in their family, in their house and lives so completely and so obviously that I couldn’t hope to misconstrue their contempt of me. I don’t blame them for that, I wasn’t even related to them, not really, and they were obligated to take me in, but I fully realise that there was absolutely no need to…to hurt me the way that they did or to treat me the way that they did.”
“You’re damn right they didn’t have a right to treat you like that.” Dean burst out angrily. “If I ever met them I’d rip their lungs out!”
Harry had to smile at that as he realised that what he was feeling right now, it was the protection and the safety of having a brother to look out for him, someone he could rely on. He’d never felt anything like it before. It felt really nice and if he wasn’t careful, then he’d find himself getting addicted to it very quickly and very easily. It was a nice thought, one that he held onto tight. He liked having brothers, he liked having a family to call his own. He didn’t think he could leave now, even if he tried to. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to get to know his new found family and he wanted to stay with them for as long as they wanted him.
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A/N: This will be my last update until the New Year. There are a few more updates for the rest of this year, but they are not scheduled for this fic, lovelies. So if you aren’t reading any of my other fics, then I will be seeing you soon.
I think this is all I need to tell you lovelies for now. Come join me on Facebook under the name Star Mass (FB wouldn’t let me have StarLight or Massacre as a name), but other than that, I’ll be back in the New Year, lovelies, see you soon,
StarLight Massacre. X
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The Tainted Blood of the Father