Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.
A/N: As you may have caught from the disclaimer, this is a Harry Potter/Supernatural crossover. You don't really need to be familiar with both, but it will help understand some of the references in the story if you know at least one or the other, and since I'm posting this under the Supernatural fandom, more of the Harry Potter back-story is explained than that of the Winchester brothers. This takes place after season two of Supernatural and goes AU for Harry Potter after Order of the Phoenix. I hope it's up to snuff. As to 'All at Once', I'll have the next chapter for that one out after this is finished – the plot bunny for this is taking up all my time right now, but never fear! I will finish AaO, I promise.
Once is Happenstance
10:30
pm, July 19, 2007
Room 13, Sleep-Right Motel
Knoxville, Iowa
"Thank Merlin for shrinking charms," Harry muttered, setting his saddlebag and helmet on the motel's dresser-slash-television stand. It contained far, far more than its outward appearance would suggest. It took him a moment of rummaging around to locate the items he wanted, a miniature duffle bag and a gold-and-black backpack that looked as though they belonged in a little girl's Barbie collection. Retrieving his wand from the holster strapped to his left forearm, he resized the two bags. His attention fixed on the duffle first, digging out some clean clothes. This time, it was socks, underwear, a plain black t-shirt, and a pair of faded blue jeans.
He draped his leather jacket over the rickety motel chair that sat at an angle in the corner before kicking off his boots. He looked at his pile of clean clothing and then at the backpack and shrugged, "Fuck it. Information can wait – I want a shower."
Grabbing his bathroom kit from the outside zipper pocket on the duffle and his pile of clean clothes, Harry disappeared into the bathroom. As scalding-hot water sluiced through his hair and beat down on his shoulders, he sighed and leaned against the tile wall. I hope this one runs smoother than the last one. How the hell did Lucius find me in Podunk, Arizona? And how the fuck did he duck that AK? Must be getting rusty in my old age, his thoughts were decidedly sarcastic. Doesn't matter much – I'll get him next time he shows his poncy head. At least he didn't show up until after that damn murderous ghost was properly banished. Using the complementary motel shampoo-plus-conditioner, he lathered up his hair. Now, enough with the memories, Potter. What did the website say about the next job? Three disappearances in two weeks… The disappearances aren't linked to the lunar cycle, so it isn't a werewolf. It's in town, so it can't be a wendigo. Hell, there are only a dozen or so creatures that hunt in towns… I don't think it's a skin-thief. Skin-thieves prefer larger cities. Hmm… Gonna hafta look more into this, I suppose.
Harry hurriedly finished up his shower and pulled on his clean clothes. He ran a comb through his wet hair, knowing the attempt to tame it was so far beyond the realm of possibility that it bordered on the absurd. He took his time shaving, choosing to do so the muggle way, with a disposable razor and a liberal amount of Colgate shaving gel. He didn't bother with aftershave – he wasn't out to impress anybody, and the smell of most aftershaves got on his nerves. When he was done, he pulled the stopper from the drain and sighed. "Down the drain – yeah, that's pretty accurate. Story of my life, down the fucking drain."
Ignoring his reflection, Harry packed up his kit and gathered his dirty clothes. The clothes were treated to a cleaning charm before the sweatshirt and khakis were rolled back up and returned to the duffle. The kit he left on the dresser, between his saddlebag and helmet. He grabbed the backpack and pulled out his laptop – a gift from his only remaining friend, Leanne MacRucky, who had assured him that the custom computer would have no adverse reactions to magic in its vicinity. Harry still wasn't sure how it worked, but he didn't particularly care. It connected to the internet and ran his distractions without needing charging, so who was he to complain? While waiting for the computer to boot up, he snagged the glass ashtray off the dresser and moved it to the bedside table, dug a miniaturized bag of groceries out of his saddlebag, and moved his wand, wallet, and cigarette case to within easy reach.
Stretching out on the motel bed, Harry resized the bag of groceries and dug out his meal of choice: a 24-oz. can of Monster and a ham-and-American Lunchable. Pulling up the website for the local paper, Harry absently munched his supper and set to rereading the articles that brought him to Knoxville.
11:45 pm, July 19, 2007
Room 14, Sleep-Right Motel
Knoxville, Iowa
Dean stretched his neck a little and glanced up from the EMF. It had collided – rather hard – with a brick wall on the last hunt, and definitely needed some work. After snagging a room, Sam had headed out in search of provisions – they were low on salt and lighter fluid. Luckily, their previous research of the town indicated that there was a Wal-Mart as well as a hospital right inside city limits. With the town only being roughly eight thousand people, Dean figured Sam would be back in a little over an hour. Hopefully less; he really didn't like having his brother out of his sight. After confirming that Sam had only been gone half an hour, Dean went back to repairing the EMF.
Changing out a couple of fried wires and two broken light bulbs, Dean inserted a new pair of batteries and flicked it on, just to make sure the damn thing was working properly. He wasn't prepared for it to light up as high as it did – the indicator lights were half-lit. Growling a little, he sprung to his feet and double-checked that the salt lines in front of the door and window were unbroken. They were.
Just our luck to pick the haunted motel in this two-horse town! Dean hurried over to where the duffle that housed the brothers' shotguns sat and retrieved one of them and a handful of shells. The EMF's lights grew a little brighter and another two indicators lit up as he came close to the wall their room shared with number thirteen. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. At least it's not this room, he thought, striding over to the window. He pulled the drape aside and looked out at the dimly lit parking lot, trying to figure out if there was anyone staying in room thirteen. There was a battered, old Winnebago in the spot furthest from the office, a '97 Corvette a couple of slots down from the RV, and a '77 Harley in the spot next to the handicapped place next to the office, right under the lot's one and only light. There was no way to tell if any of the vehicles in the lot had owners currently residing in room thirteen.
Shrugging a little, Dean tucked the shells for the shotgun into his jeans pocket and retrieved his lock pick from his jacket. Carrying the EMF and the lock pick in one hand and the shotgun in the other, he made sure the room key was in his other pocket and slipped into the damp night air. The curtains for room thirteen were drawn, but so were the curtains for all the other rooms – Dean couldn't tell if anyone was in there or not. Silently thanking small-town inertia for still using real keys, Dean quickly had the lock to room thirteen picked.
11:55 pm, July 19, 2007
Room 13, Sleep-Right Motel
Knoxville, Iowa
The computer was still on, sitting on one half of the double bed, while Harry snoozed on the other half, an empty Lunchable box sitting between the two. The nearly inaudible click of the lock had Harry's eyes snapping open. Reacting purely on instinct, he grabbed his wand and rolled off the bed, using it as cover and a convenient hiding place until he could figure out who was entering his room.
Peering from around the end of the bed, he watched as the door slowly opened and a tall man, carrying a shotgun and what looked like a walkman, stepped in. Harry sprang to his feet, not about to let himself be easy prey, and shouted, "Stupefy!"
Dean, who had immediately recognized the fact that this was an occupied – though very dark – room, had a split second to notice a shadow spring up from behind the bed and wonder, Isn't that a song by Disturbed? before a red jet of light hit him squarely in his chest and unconsciousness claimed him.
Harry flicked on the lights and closed the motel room door before looking over the man who had so rudely interrupted his nap. He was happy, for the umpteenth time, that he'd given in and had his eyes fixed; though he'd done it at a muggle lasik clinic and not through a mediwitch. The man on his floor was a good half-foot taller than he was, if not slightly more so, and looked to be in good shape. "If I wasn't me, I don't think I'd want to meet him down a dark alley," he muttered to himself as he mobilicorpused the unconscious man into the motel chair. He applied the strongest sticking charms he knew to the man, ensuring that he wouldn't be going anywhere.
With the man off the floor, Harry gathered the shotgun, lock pick, and freaky-looking walkman from where they had landed and sat them on the bed. The walkman's row of lights lit up fully and the thing emitted a high-pitched noise akin to a dog whistle. Grimacing, Harry fiddled with the gadget and found the off switch. In the silence, Harry turned his attention back to the man. "Let's see just who you are, shall we?"
The first thing Harry did was check the man's arm for the Dark Mark. "Well, that doesn't always mean much," he muttered, recalling numerous run-ins over the years with Death Eater sympathizers and hired bounty hunters. Working through a gap in the back of the chair, Harry retrieved the man's wallet. "Hmm… What the hell?" There were no fewer than four IDs and more than a dozen credit cards, no two of which had the same name. "Phil Rudd, James Hetfield, John Bonham, Noah Beery, Kene Holliday, Neil Peart… Okay, whoever the fuck you are, you're about to figure out why breaking into my motel room is a bad plan."
Harry dug into a side compartment on his saddlebag and retrieved a wooden box roughly the same size as a matchbox. He resized it to its normal dimensions – about sixteen inches long, twelve inches deep, and ten or so wide – and opened it. It contained dozens of vials of various potions. "Blood-replenishing, dreamless sleep, burn salve, ah, here we are!" He grabbed the small bottle of clear potion and spun off the eyedropper top. Opening the intruder's mouth, he counted out three drops as they hit the man's tongue. Putting away the vial, he aimed his wand at the man and ennervated him.
Dean's eyes opened and he shook his head a little. His head felt fuzzy and his mouth felt like he'd been sucking on cotton. He tried to figure out what was going on, but his brain felt like it was a half-step behind reality.
Harry didn't allow the intruder time to orient himself; he knew that if the man was versed in occlumency, he only had two or three questions' time before the veritaserum would be useless. "Who are you?"
Dean's eyes flickered up from where they had been inspecting the beige carpet of the motel room and answered. "Dean Winchester." He blinked and shook his head again, What the hell…?
"Why did you break into my room?" Harry immediately snapped out the next question on his assess-the-threat list.
"My EMF indicated that there was a supernatural presence in the room, so I was going to investigate it." Dean's brain caught up just as he finished answering the question, Why am I telling this schlub the truth?
Of all the possible answers, Harry had least suspected that one. He paused, blinked a couple of times, and laughed. Of all the people after me, the one I catch breaking into my room in the middle of nowhere ends up being a Hunter. Harry retrieved the antidote to the veritaserum from his potions kit. "Want to stop having to tell me the truth with every question I ask?"
"Yes," again Dean's mind was a half-step behind and all he could do was mentally kick himself.
"Then open your mouth," Harry unstoppered the vial and measured out the correct dose. "This may taste like shit, but it'll get the job done."
Dean's mouth was halfway open when his brain caught up. He pressed his lips together. The man standing in front of him sighed, rolled his eyes, and said, "Look, if I wanted to poison you, I would have done it while you were out cold. See?" He lifted the eyedropper to his own mouth and squeezed out a drop of the bitter, foul-tasting liquid. He swallowed and shuddered melodramatically, "Damn, that's nasty."
Seeing that the taste seemed to be the only thing wrong with the liquid, Dean figured it wouldn't hurt, and opened his mouth. Harry administered the antidote and returned the vial to the kit. Giving the Hunter a moment for the new potion to counter the effects of the old, Harry closed his potions box, shrunk it, and put it back in his saddlebag. "What the fuck?" Dean's voice indicated that he'd either seen Harry's shrinking charm in action or noticed that he wasn't physically bound to the chair.
Grabbing his cigarette case, Harry retrieved his lighter from his pocket and lit up. "If I let you go and agree to answer your questions, will you promise not to hit me?" he asked with a wry grin.
"I don't promise anything," Dean replied.
Harry shrugged, "Fair enough." He aimed his wand at Dean and muttered, "Finite incantatem."
Dean suddenly found that he could now remove his arms and legs from where they'd been held in place against the cheap wood of the motel chair. He sprung to his feet and came close to shouting, "Who the hell are you?"
Harry took a drag of his cigarette and flicked the ashes absently on the carpet. "Harry Potter."
"What are you?" was Dean's next question.
"That's rather an open-ended question, isn't it?" Harry grinned, "But I'll take pity on you and answer the question you meant to ask. I'm a wizard, British-born, but currently under political asylum here in the states. To pass time – not to mention make it hard for people to find me – I do what I assume you do; I Hunt."
Dean realized that Harry was being completely honest with him – you can't con a con, after all, and no demon he'd ever come across had ever done quite what he'd seen the man in the room do – and sat heavily in the motel chair. "Come again?"
Harry picked up Dean's pick, shotgun, and EMF and handed them to the man. "What, exactly, did you need clarification on?"
Dean didn't know where to start, so he just picked a word and went with it. "Wizard?"
"Ah, I see you've not yet located anything from strictly the magical world. Well, Dean, to be blunt, I'm a wizard – I have the ability to control and direct magic to do what I want it to. Even though you're not a true wizard, you are a Hunter, right?" Dean nodded. "This means that you're somewhere between a true muggle – those happily ignorant people who live in little white houses with picket fences and think that demons and ghosts are nothing more than fairytales – and a true wizard. I would imagine you're something akin to a squib, but that's not really the point. What I'm trying to say is that there are laws that say I can't reveal my magic to a muggle, but that law doesn't apply to family members, people who deal with the supernatural on a day-to-day basis, or in a life-or-death situation. Since you're a Hunter, you deal with ghosts, ghoulies, and wee little beasties pretty regular, right?" Dean nodded again. "Hence, I can tell you about my magic ability and not get in trouble with the law. With me so far?"
"I think so," Dean said.
Harry smirked, "You know, you're taking this a bit better than the last Hunter I ran into."
"Well," Dean shrugged, "if I do what I do and don't believe in magic, I doubt that I would have lived very long in this business. Most of the protections and protocols we use are thought of as 'magical' by the general public, after all." He grinned and shrugged again, "Besides, I'm not the sort to disbelieve what I see."
"Spot-on!" Harry punctuated his reply with a jab of his cigarette, At least he's not a blockhead like so many of the Hunter ilk can be. "Next question."
Dean scrubbed a hand across his face. This has to be the single weirdest conversation I've ever had. "Political asylum?"
Harry sighed and sat down, "What, you wouldn't rather know my favorite pizza toppings? My drink of choice? Straight into the hard stuff, huh?"
Dean chuckled a little at Harry's somewhat whiney tone. Now that he was in full control of his brain, he couldn't help but admire how quickly the man had responded to his intrusion, and how he'd handled the situation by asking questions first – Dean couldn't help but think that Harry and his brother were cut from the same cloth. "Nope," he countered, "I could've asked the really hard questions, like when's the last time you got laid."
Rather than responding to the humor as Dean had intended, Harry winced a little. "Point taken," he stated, grinding his cigarette out in the ashtray on the night stand. "Simply put, if I return to the UK, I run the risk of spending the rest of my life in prison – definitely not something on my to-do list."
Dean laughed; he was really starting to like this guy. "Though I can appreciate the sentiment about prison – really, dude, I ain't shitting you on that score – why'd you have to leave home, so-to-speak?"
Harry sighed, "It's rather a long story."
"I got nothing but time," Dean made a 'go on' motion with his hands.
Harry clicked open his silver cigarette case, immediately snapping it shut again when he saw there were only five fags left. He scrubbed a hand across his face and began, "I suppose the easiest place to begin this is by starting long before I was born. In the 1920s girl by the name of Merope Gaunt fell in love with a man she shouldn't have – not normally a world-changing event, I know, but Merope was a witch. She was also from a not-so-nice family that was distinctly lacking in the money department. The man she fell for was the only son of the local muggle lord. She used magic to bespell the man into thinking he was in love with her and they eloped."
"And how does this explain why you're hiding out in the US?"
Harry rolled his eyes, "I'm getting to that! Honestly, I tried to warn you that this was a long story. Anyway, no one is quite sure what happened, but after a while the spell on the muggle wore off or was broken – he returned home, abandoning Merope. Merope was pregnant, of course, and had her son at a muggle orphanage, living just long enough to name him…" Harry trailed off, lost in the memory of the summer following his fifth year, when he finally got a hold of his temper long enough to sit down and demand an explanation from Dumbledore.
"And…?" Dean prompted, despite himself, he was caught up in the story – something that hadn't really happened since his dad had stopped telling him and Sam bedtime stories more than two decades ago.
Harry shook himself a little, dragging himself back to the present. "And the kid grew up in a muggle orphanage, in London. He had inherited his mother's magical gift, but… I don't know… Something about him was twisted. He liked hurting other kids, and learned how to use his magic to hurt them at a rather early age. In an attempt to cut a long story short, I'll skip ahead to early in the year of 1980. A witch by the name of Sybil Trelawney – and if you knew more of the magical world, the name would actually mean something to you – made a prophecy. By this time, the boy who'd grown up in the muggle orphanage had become very dark indeed. Though he was personally after immortality and world-domination, he used propaganda to recruit supporters, playing on the wizarding world's inherent fear of the muggle world –"
Dean held up his hand, "Hold up, 'the wizarding world's inherent fear of the muggle world'? I would think it would be the other way around, if your little demonstration from earlier is any indication of the type of power you have at your command."
Harry quirked an eyebrow, "Really? How about the Spanish Inquisition? The Salem Witch Trials? Separate most witches and wizards from their wands and they're worse off than a muggle. Most witches and wizards aren't raised to realize that magic isn't the answer to everything – I can count on one hand the number of wizards I know from back home who can fight hand-to-hand."
"Okay," Dean said, "you've made your point. You were saying about a prophecy and this evil dude?"
Harry smiled a little wanly at Dean's description of Voldemort as 'this evil dude'. "Well, like I was saying, he played on the wizarding world's fear of the muggle world, and massed a lot of supporters. He didn't quite have the political pull to get things changed, though, so he and his followers began eliminating anyone who stood in their way."
"By 'eliminate' you mean 'kill'." It wasn't a question.
Harry nodded, "Yeah. Kill, torture… His followers didn't realize it at first, but he was collecting power from these acts of violence."
"I know a couple of demons who do the same thing," Dean supplied, indicating that he understood the gist, if not the actuality, of what Harry was saying. "What about that prophecy?"
Harry rolled his shoulders a little, wincing as something between his shoulder blades popped with a loud crack, and stood. He paced as he continued his tale. "It foretold the birth of the one person capable of stopping the Dark Lord," though Harry had never really realized it before, but he'd not spoken aloud Voldemort's name since killing the man ten years earlier.
"Let me guess," Dean said with a half-grin, "you."
Harry nodded, "Sort of. What it actually boiled down to was that it could have been either me or another kid who was born the day before me. But, the Dark Lord came after me first, so me it became."
Dean shook his head, "Huh?"
"It has to do with the wording of the prophecy," Harry indicated the long-faded lightning bolt scar over his left eyebrow. "Since he marked me as his equal, I was the one who could destroy him."
"Doesn't look like much," was Dean's honest opinion. After all, he'd been shot, stabbed, electrocuted, and so on. A simple cut on the head was nothing.
"It's a curse scar. When I was a baby – the Halloween after my first birthday, actually – the Dark Lord killed my parents and tried to kill me, too. The curse he used… It's called the killing curse. It has no counter, no block, no shield. That curse hit me, though, and rebounded. Left me with this scar, but didn't kill me."
For the first time since releasing Dean from the effects of the veritaserum, Harry could see skepticism on his guest's face. A demonstration was called for. "Accio cockroach," he incanted. Dean's puzzled expression disappeared when a large roach flew out from under the bed and landed in Harry's open palm. Dean couldn't help himself – he shuddered. Harry picked up his wand from the bed and shook the roach onto the floor. Dean leaned forward to get a better look. The roach was nearly two inches long and squirming, trying to right itself. He had to restrain himself from getting up and stomping on the bug. Harry aimed his wand at the squirming insect, "Avada kedavra."
The rush of green light made the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand up. The cockroach wasn't moving any more. "That…"
Harry nodded, tossing his wand back onto the bed, "Was the killing curse."
"So how'd you survive it?"
"Old magic… My mother died in order to save me; it created a lingering protection that kept me safe for a long, long time." Harry stopped for a moment and picked up the Monster can that sat on the bedside table. He drained the remains in one go and tossed the empty can in a wastebasket. "In any case, the rebounding curse sent the Dark Lord into a state of… Not quite dead. He was no longer corporeal, but he hadn't died. He fled and the wizarding world rejoiced for ten years, thinking he was gone for good. He wasn't, though, and began making attempts to return the same year I started going to magic school. From that point on, he tried to kill me just about once per year – excepting when I was thirteen, and I think he was too side-tracked trying to get his followers together again and planning for what happened the following year – until he killed the wrong people."
"Who did he kill?"
Though it had been ten years or more since it had happened, Harry still felt the losses he'd suffered quite keenly. "At the end of my fifth year, he killed my godfather. Technically, he didn't kill Sirius, but he was responsible. Sirius' death hit me pretty hard, but it made me sit back and think, too. After a couple of weeks of shock and grief, I got my arse in gear and started studying, training to take down the bastard. It took no little amount of effort on my part to get people to help me, but eventually, I got the trainers and tutors I needed. I finished up my last two years of school by the end of October of what would have been my sixth year. After that, though I still stayed at the school – oh, I didn't mention it, but my magic school was a boarding school – I had advanced courses in whatever I could think of that would help." Harry snagged his cigarette case again and opened it. He was so caught up in his own memories of the intensive training sessions and other events of the time that he didn't notice he'd lit the cigarette with a bit of wandless magic, but Dean did. I can't help but wish I could do that. Would save the hassle of carrying around matches for salt-and-burns.
After he'd smoked half the cigarette, Harry sighed. "In January of '97, one of his followers killed my best mate, Ron, and cursed my girlfriend into insanity. My only other really close friend apparently blamed me for what happened, and it was the last straw. I figured enough was enough; I wasn't going to put up with that shite any more. I made a target of myself and allowed the Dark Lord's followers to take me right to him. At the time, I wasn't sure if I wanted to kill him or let him win – the government and press had done their best over the preceding years to paint me as an attention-seeking glory-hound while covering up any indication that the bad guy hadn't been defeated permanently when I was a baby – I was in bad shape."
"Obviously, since I'm sitting here talking with you, you won."
"Yeah… Though it was a near thing. To be honest, I still don't remember much about that last encounter… Smoke and screaming, mostly. I do recall that I didn't kill the bastard with magic, though. I broke his fucking neck with my bare hands…"
"Sounds like you did the world a favor."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Harry scoffed, "I fulfilled my prophesized duty and saved the world. You'd think I would have gotten at least a 'thanks', but that didn't happen. Despite the fact that he was the darkest wizard in a century; despite the fact that I was, essentially, Fate's busboy; despite the fact that I'd saved the world from a slow death, the government – a more corrupt bunch of inept fools you'll never find – decreed that I had to be held accountable for my actions. The press ate it up and painted me as the next Dark Lord. I was to be tried for murder. I caught wind of this through an old friend of my parents only three days or so after the final battle.
"I disappeared to France, hoping that my few remaining allies would be able to clear things up for me. That didn't happen – my strongest support had an 'accident'. Though they tried to pin the death on me, it couldn't stick. There had been too many witnesses to what had really happened. It took a couple of weeks to figure out that though I had killed off the main bad guy, the mass of supporters he'd had had taken control of the Ministry. Therefore, if I go home, I'll go to prison… if they didn't execute me." Harry ground out the cigarette and sighed. "I managed to win the battle, but I lost the war."
Dean let out a low whistle, "Damn… And I thought my life was rough… Why the US, though? If it'd been me, I'd've picked Rio… Maybe the Bahamas."
Harry shrugged, "I was once told that the best place to lose yourself is the US. Between the size of the population and the sheer massiveness of the country, there are a lot of places to hide. After finding out that I had a price on my head, I figured it couldn't hurt to keep my options open."
"So, how'd you get into Hunting?" Dean asked, thinking This story is way too complicated to not be true. The best lies are always the simple ones, and this story is anything but simple.
"Well, I arrived in New York in March of 1997. I contacted my bank and had them transfer all my holdings to their US offices, selling off all my properties when they did so. I spent about six months going through the stuff they transferred over with my money, selling off what I didn't want or couldn't use. I'd just finished up when I was found by a bounty hunter working for the Ministry. It was my first clue that staying in one place was likely to get me killed. The bounty hunter who'd located me was deported, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he – or another just like him – found me, so I sold the flat I'd purchased, snagged my bike, and made a run for it. I traveled constantly, stopping only to sleep or fuel up, from September of '97 until June of '98. I found myself growing rather hungry one day and pulled off to find something to nosh on. That one stop gave my aimless wanderings a purpose."
Dean smirked, there was only one place someone like Harry could have stumbled across Hunters. "Lemme guess, you were in Nebraska, right?"
Harry nodded, "Yep. Just off of Highway 30, outside Odessa."
"Harvelle's Roadhouse."
"Yeah," Harry chuckled. "To say I was a little thrown when I overheard a conversation about hunting werewolves would be a massive understatement." Harry ran a hand through his hair. "What about you? How'd you get into Hunting?"
Dean shrugged a little, "It's sorta the family business. My dad Hunted, and raised me and my brother to do the same."
"Your mum didn't care?"
"Our mom died when I was four," Dean's face lost the friendly expression.
Harry winced, "Sorry, mate."
"It's okay… She's actually why Dad started Hunting."
"How's that?"
"A demon killed her."
"So'd he get the bastard?"
Dean shook his head, "No, he died before he got the chance. But it doesn't matter – I shot that son of a bitch dead just over a month ago."
Harry blinked in surprise, "I thought you couldn't kill a demon – just send them back to the abyssal plane?"
"Abyssal plane?"
"Hell," Harry clarified with a negligent waive of his hand.
"Oh. Well, normally that's the case, but we got a hold of a gun that could kill anything – vampire, demon, it didn't matter. The Colt could make it dead."
"Could?" Harry questioned. "What happened to it? Sounds like a gun like that could come in handy."
"Well, it only worked like that as long as it still had the original bullets. I used the last one to kill the demon that killed my mom. Now, it's just another .45."
Harry nodded in understanding, but the low, throaty rumble of a large engine pulling up just outside interrupted him before he could reply. The engine shut off, and Dean got up and walked to the door. "It's just my brother. I sent him off for provisions," he explained, opening the door. "Sammy! Over here!"
A/N2: The title comes from the quote, "Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, three times is enemy action." – Ian Fleming (Goldfinger). Yes, this means I'm probably going to expand this into a trilogy, but it may be a while before I finish the next installment (the current tale is finished and will consist of five chapters). I'm caught up in the middle of packing (something I admit I've put off until the last possible moment) for my imminent move to El Paso and I've got aramie.greyson breathing down my neck for neglecting my betaing duties, not to mention another chapter forAll at Once to write.
Reviews are definitely appreciated, but flames are used to roast marshmallows. I'd like to know if I've managed to get Dean's character right - and for Sam!Fans, he'll be appearing in the next chapter.