Chapter Text
About a week after Harry had met Sam and Dean Winchester, along with Castiel for the first time, Harry made his way down the narrow, winding road that eventually led to Bobby's place. He'd meant to visit sooner, but Gabriel had kept him quite busy.
Gabriel. The name still felt a bit awkward and alien to him, but Harry reckoned it was time he started getting used to it. Besides, something in him felt more…complete and less alone, whenever he used the angelic name. Loki hadn't felt off, per se, but Gabriel felt complete in a way Loki somehow hadn't.
Parking his motorcycle next to a pile of broken cars, Harry removed his helmet and unpacked the large basket he had, with the help of a little magic, secured in the large bag he'd fastened on the back. Walking up to the door, basket held under an arm, he knocked once, then stood back and waited.
Gabriel had been busy teaching him all sorts of things the past week: sword fighting, lore, letters and symbols and sigils, and broken pieces of more languages than Harry had ever known existed. It was incredibly exhausting, but he was still having the time of his life, somehow. It was fun.
The door wrenched open, and Bobby glared up at him. "Kid, what're you doing here?"
Harry smiled. "Hi, Bobby. Haven't been by in a while." He jiggled his basket. "And I brought some food. Figured it'd maybe keep you fed for a week or so. That is, if you can abstain from those horrible TV dinners and the awful beans you eat. Made you a raspberry pie as well."
Bobby blinked.
Harry's grin was a little sheepish. "Okay, so maybe I was bored out of my skull last night and couldn't sleep. Still, it makes me feel better knowing you've got proper food. I have issues, I know," he ended up saying in a mumble.
Barking a laugh, Bobby shook his head. "Eh, what the hell, kid. Come on in."
"Thanks!"
"That Gabriel out, then?"
Harry shook his head as he placed the basket on the table in Bobby's kitchen. "Nah, not really. To be honest, I was a bit worried at first, because normally he never sticks around for more than a couple of days at the time, but this time it's been a lot longer than that." Months? Had it been months? Harry wasn't sure, but if it hadn't been, then it probably wasn't off by far, either.
The amount of food he transferred from it to the fridge and the freezer didn't match the size of the basket, but Harry'd sort of forgotten about that until Bobby pointedly cleared his throat.
"Erm. It's like the TARDIS?" Harry suggested weakly.
"I'm just gonna pretend I understood that, kid. Now, I want you to be honest with me here: are you a Trickster?"
Harry blinked, then shook his head, bemused. "No. No, why?"
"'Cause I seen you snap your fingers, just like that Gabriel character. I know you ain't just human. I just don't know what you are, or if it's bad."
Harry felt cold and afraid and worried inside as he faced Bobby, his eyes a bit wider than usual. "I…I'm not evil, I know that. Our choices make us who we are, and I try to do good. I just… My people, where I'm from, we're…sort of born with magic, Bobby. I was a wizard, but Castiel thinks I'm not any more. So I…I just don't know any more."
"You're born with magic?" Bobby asked, frowning and looking a bit like he wasn't sure Harry was telling the truth or not.
Harry nodded. "Yeah. It seems to be hereditary for the most part." He glanced down at the food still in the basket, then at the fridge and freezer behind him. With a tired sigh, Harry closed his eyes briefly, then snapped his fingers.
The food sorted itself into a semblance of order in its designated places.
"I'm not sure what the Wizarding world did, exactly, or what happened, but at some point they forbade my kind from ever stepping foot on this continent. That's when I first met Loki, the first winter I lived here. He wasn't too pleased with me, running around where I had no business being, but something made him change his mind and take me in." Harry took a deep breath. "So, am I evil?"
Bobby considered him carefully. "Let's make some more tests, first, aye?"
"You cut me open with seven different knives, Bobby!"
Bobby grinned. "Didn't work, did it? Need to know how to off a wizard."
Harry rubbed a hand over his face, then snapped his fingers again.
The table was made, coffee poured into familiar mugs, and two slices of raspberry pie was laid out onto plates. With a slight hesitation, Harry sat down. He stalled by pouring liberal amounts of milk and sugar into his coffee.
"We're human, Bobby. We bleed like you. The only difference is that something in us makes us capable of using magic. This," and Harry almost hated himself for doing it, but at the same time it felt good talking about it, telling someone who wasn't an angel and who sort of already knew all about being a wizard already.
He pulled out his wand from thin air and laid it on the table between them.
"That's my wand. Ordinarily, I'd need that to do magic. For some reason, I don't. In order to incapacitate a wizard, all you need to do is separate them from their wand. Wizards are sort of arrogant in the way they feel they're superior to what they call Muggles – people born without magic. I doubt even a handful of them knows how to fight without a wand."
Harry took a sip of his coffee, made a grimace when he found it too bitter still, and added some more milk and sugar to his mug. "I have a horrible suspicion that my people did something awful, once, and that's why we aren't allowed to come here any more, to the US, but I don't know. I mean, werewolves and vampires and ghosts and all those creatures and beings that you call monsters, they're nothing like the versions I encountered in the Wizarding world. My godfather's best friend was a werewolf, and he actually turned into a wolf, but as long as he took his, his medicine, then he was perfectly docile. Even without it, as long as he locked himself up tight, he wasn't a danger to the people around him.
"Ghosts were friendly and talkative, not dangerous, and vampires, yeah, so they were a bit distrusted and feared, but as long as they had legitimate donors, no one complained about them. There were centaurs living in the forest by my school, merpeople in the lake with a giant squid, and my headmaster had a phoenix as a familiar. And…" Harry flashed a crooked grin. "And, yeah, we do fly on broomsticks."
Bobby smirked. "So you and Cas really did go flying, then."
Harry flushed a little. "Um, yeah. Gabriel wasn't very happy about that," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I think most of the stereotypes about wizards and witches are founded in some sort of truth, to be honest. The women are called witches, by the way."
"That's it, then?" Bobby asked, sounding rather sceptical to Harry's ears.
"Oh, no, but could you really tell me everything there is to know about Americans?" Harry asked, pointedly.
"Fair enough, I suppose." Bobby reached over and picked up Harry's wand. He twisted and turned it, taking in every little scratch and imperfection. "Feels just like a stick, to me."
"That's because you're not a wizard. All wands have a core that helps the user channel and access their magic. The wood's important as well. I used to have a holly wand with a phoenix feather as a core, but it stopped working for me." He had sort of outgrown it long before he'd stopped using a wand at all. Still… With a cheeky grin, Harry focused his magic, concentrated on his wand, then murmured, "Lumos."
The wand lit up.
Bobby yelped and dropped it with a clatter to the table.
Harry laughed and said, "Nox."
"Very funny, boy," Bobby grumbled.
"I have books, you know. I'll make sure to turn the visible next time you visit."
Bobby narrowed his eyes. "You been hiding books from me?"
"Oh, yes." Harry nodded. "Wizarding books. The ones with the moving pictures, wand based spells and sex magic."
"Hmmph," Bobby scoffed.
For a while, they were both quiet as they focused on their pie. Then, frowning a little, Harry cocked his head to the side. It had been a little windy when Harry drove here, but still sunny and bright. It was a bit after noon, yes, but it shouldn't be fully dark outside for another couple of hours yet, and still, the view outside was…pitch black.
"It's awfully dark outside," he murmured. "A storm, d'you think?"
Except, it didn't feel much like a storm. It just felt dark and cold and off and, frankly, it was scaring him.
"Crap!" Bobby exclaimed. "Those're demons, kid."
"Demons?" Harry yelped. "Shit!"
For the first time in a long while, the blue text was silent and absent.
"How do you kill demons, Bobby?" Harry asked, feeling more than a little nervous and a lot nauseous.
"You don't know? You got one out of me, you idiot!"
"It never came up! I mean, yes, I know how to exorcise one, Gabriel taught me, but that only applies to demons who're possessing someone, and—bugger!" The window behind Harry smashed to pieces.
"I just had that replaced, you filthy hellspawn!" Bobby shouted.
"What about the salt?" Harry wondered. He knew Bobby put salt lines everywhere. The man was more paranoid than Moody had been, only not as insane about it. There was no way Bobby would've forgotten to ward properly.
"Must've been disturbed by the workers," Bobby snapped. "Watch out!"
Black smoke poured in from the broken window. It brought back memories – horrible, awful memories – of when Harry was thirteen. The dementors had swarmed him then, pushed him down, clawed at him, sucked at his soul. And while the demons didn't bring out Harry's worst memories, they made him feel out of it and terrified and cold.
Harry snapped.
Raising his arms, palms out, Harry shouted, "Expecto Patronum!" just like he had then. Light burst out of his palms and shaped into a familiar animal. The stag looked the same, except it had wings now, wings exactly like Gabriel's, and it was huge and glowing and pure.
The demons shrieked.
"Kid!" Bobby shouted. Harry jolted, then he blinked and suddenly he was behind Bobby's wheelchair and was dragging him out of the room. The stag kept guard. It sank its sharp antlers into any demon that came too close, turning it to dust, and the demons backed away for a short moment. But it was draining the patronus. Each demon it killed, a little more of its pure light dissipated, and there were a lot of demons; too many demons.
"Gabriel!" Harry called, even as he pushed Bobby into the living room, then began conjuring salt that he shaped into lines on the windowsills and the doorways. He even covered the fireplace, just to be safe.
"Your stag's gone!"
Harry's breath hitched; he'd felt it like a jab to his heart when it'd been destroyed. Then he willed his strongest, happiest memory into existence again and shouted, "Expecto Patronum," once more. The stag was just a large, but not as radiant, and it shot off into the fray of black smoke.
Summoning patroni was draining. Each time a demon attacked it, it resonated back to Harry like a physical blow. It hurt, it hurt a lot and he was starting to feel dizzy.
"Gabriel! Gabriel!" Harry blinked the sweat out of his eyes just in time to see his second patronus wink out of existence. "Expecto Patronum," he cried, then almost collapsed at the wrenching feeling when the patronus burst from his hands. It burned his hands, his veins, his magic. "Castiel?" he whispered. "Bobby, did you ward against angels?"
"No, no, couldn't find nothing that worked." Bobby looked grim and he was clutching a sawed off shotgun in his hands. Harry didn't want to know where he'd stashed that.
"Shit," Harry murmured. "Do you have a knife?"
"Yeah, 'course."
"Silver?" Bobby just looked insulted as he handed the shiny dagger over. "Thanks."
Harry took a deep breath, then he sliced his palm open, hissing with pain. The sigil he drew on the floor was a simple, common summoning glyph, largely ineffective unless the person drawing it was particularly powerful, or particularly desperate. Harry happened to be both.
Slamming his palm down in the middle of the design, Harry gasped out, "Gabriel," as the unexpected pain of his raw and bleeding palm took him by surprise when it connected with too much force on the hard floor. He hissed, snatched his hand back and cradled it to his chest.
"Please, please, Gabriel," he murmured.
Maybe he'd cut too deep? The knife had been a bit sharper than he'd expected, but—
There was a flutter of feathers, then Gabriel was there. "Harry, what's the— Oh, hello!" Gabriel pouted at the demons, still flying at the empty doorway but unable to cross the threshold.
Harry whimpered as his last patronus died.
"Now, that's just not fun," Gabriel growled. He drew his sword as he knelt by Harry. "You okay, kid?"
"I called, like, three times. Why didn't you answer?" Harry whispered, feeling weak and exhausted and hurt, and everything was too chaotic in his mind for him to sort out properly.
Gabriel looked grim. "They must've blocked me out. And I sure as hell don't like that one bit. First thing I'm gonna do when I get your sorry ass home is bind you to me good and proper. Now." Gabriel stood up again. "Close your eyes, Bobby. I got myself some demons to smite."
Gabriel didn't exactly go all archangel on the demons, but he glowed brighter than any of the patroni Harry had managed to summon. He didn't use his wings, or turned them into light and power like Harry had been told angels could do if they felt threatened enough. No, Gabriel turned pagan, turned dark and bloody and vengeful. He killed demons with ruthless efficiency, with his hands and sword alike.
For the first time, Harry realised that Gabriel was more powerful than he could ever hope to comprehend.
He was beautiful.
-x-
"Here we go, kid," Gabriel murmured in his ear. Harry blinked. The demons were gone, the kitchen looked whole, and Bobby was inspecting his wards and salt lines.
Harry realised he was still on the floor, still kneeling in front of the sigil he'd drawn on the floor, still clutching his bleeding hand to his chest.
"I don't like demons, Gabriel," he said shakily. "They make me ill, and I couldn't focus, and you were gone, and—"
"Hey, shh, it's okay, kiddo, I'm here now. You're just a fledgling, still. I'd forgotten how you react to demons. That's my fault for not telling you like I should've done right from the start."