Chapter Text
The thing was? He didn’t like kids.
Calm down, calm down.
He wasn’t a monster or anything, it wasn’t like he went around throwing rocks at them. There was just never any appeal to having a tiny human in his house that would cry all night and then puke on his shirt before he left for work.
Not for him, man.
So it fucking figured that Brian Cassidy found himself in a field where he had to deal with kids all the time. And not just any kids, but kids that were hurt or hurting or hurting others.
When it was a dead hooker? Whatever, you know? They knew the risks they took. Kids though? Those cases crawled in his head, decided to live there. When Brian wanted to sleep, he’d see them all over and over in his mind.
Every kid he saw, every fucking one, would look at him with big eyes and ask why he didn’t save them before their lives were completely fucking ruined.
The other detectives in SVU had some rosy eyed ideas that their lives weren’t ruined - Brian knew better.
Nobody bounced back from shit like what those kids went through.
Brian never did.
The whole Special Victims Unit was starting to wear on him though and Brian really thought it might be better to just quit. He wasn’t like Olivia or Elliot, he couldn’t go home and pretend his day was all normal. After three years, Brian was going to a bar after work more than he was home and he figured it was time to move on.
Brian’s scars were cut open with every kid he saw and it felt like he was bleeding out. Nobody could see it though - he was standing right there and nobody could see him.
So he turned in his two week notice and he caught a case the next day.
“Cassidy, Munch!” Captain Cragen stuck his head out of his office and looked to Brian and his partner. “Mercy Hospital has a kid, looks like abuse.”
“That’s us.” Munch was an alright guy most of the time, a good partner really. Brian was going to hate getting a new one, but Munch was also a talker so maybe a new partner wouldn’t be so bad.
Munch spent the entire drive to Mercy Hospital trying to talk Brian out of quitting SVU. Like Brian would rather stick around abused kids and pedophiles than join the undercover unit. It was better pay, better gigs, better everything.
“But there’s no me,” Munch said as they walked through the hospital doors, both turning automatically to the ER.
“That’s the whole point,” Brian said.
“Oh, you wound me!” Munch cried, clutching his chest.
“You’re too old to do that in a hospital,” Brian said, grinning even if Munch was a dumbass. “They’ll send some nurses over thinking it’s a heart attack.”
“Only heart break,” Munch sighed.
Dramatic bastard.
They flashed their badges to the nurse and she pointed them to another nurse down the hall. The nurse picked her head up when she saw them coming and rolled her eyes before joining them outside of what Brian assumed was the kid’s room.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” she huffed. “This kid isn’t talking and he’s a pain in my ass.”
Nice way to talk about some abused kid.
Munch flipped out his notebook and raised an eyebrow. “What’d he come in for?”
“Car wreck,” Nurse Sunshine said. “Taxi driver hit him and he flew about twenty feet. Kid got lucky, I’ll give him that, I don’t think he got a single scratch.”
“So why’s he here?” Brian asked.
“Because the taxi driver called the cops and they called an ambulance,” she explained. “I guess the kid threw a fit and refused to come. They told him it was hospital or juvy until they found a parent.”
“And he chose hospital,” Munch says, writing it in the weird shorthand only he understood.
“No, he said juvy but they brought him here instead.” The nurse gestured to the door. “I’m on babysitting duty because he keeps slipping out of the restraints.”
“You tied down an abused kid who got hit by a car?” Brian asked, not bothering to hide his disgust. “Real nice.”
“I give you thirty seconds with him before you decide to handcuff him too,” she said, giving Brian serious stink eye. “He bloodied the cop’s nose that brought him in.”
“Right, okay.” Brian leaned back, tried to peek in the room and couldn’t see the kid behind the privacy curtain. Munch got a few more details - fake name, fake address, no parents names given, foreign - before they were free to check out the kid.
Munch waved his hand for Brian to take the lead as they walked through the room. Brian glanced at the bed first, clocked the restraints and handcuffs lining the guard rails, then saw their victim sitting on the windowsill. The kid jumped to his feet when he saw them and - fuck.
The kid was probably eleven, maybe twelve, and Brian could see immediately why he was taken to the hospital even if the taxi somehow didn’t even scratch him. There were dark bruises on his neck, Brian could see the outlines of fat fingers, and the kid looked like he could stand to have about ten meals a day.
There were other things too - black eye, ripped clothes that didn’t fit, plenty of reasons to call in SVU.
It was a gut-punch reminder of why Brian wanted to get the hell out of SVU.
The kid though? Complete dick.
“I’m really hoping you’re here to give me a ride home,” he said, all breezy and casual while Brian saw his body tightening while he took in the best path around them for the door. “I think this is kidnapping, really.”
Brian shifted, the kid shifted, Munch grinned.
“It’s a long ride back to England,” he said, guessing the same thing Brian did based on the accent. “Why don’t we talk first? I’m Detective Munch, this is Detective Cassidy. What’s your name?”
“Cassidy Munch,” the kid said, deadpan and serious as anything.
“Really? That’s crazy, that’s our names too,” Munch said.
The kid shifted, Brian shifted.
“Small world,” the kid said sarcastically.
“Look, kid, we aren’t here to bust your chops,” Munch told him, pulling out his wise old grandpa voice. “We just want to help you, okay?”
“I don’t need help,” the kid said, like Brian figured he would. “I need to not be a prisoner in this bloody hospital when I did nothing wrong.”
“Someone did,” Brian said, lifting his chin and gesturing to his own neck. “What happened there?”
“I got hit by a car,” the kid said, automatically pulling on the dirty and baggy shirt he wore like it could cover his neck when it wasn’t even covering his collarbones.
“And then it choked you?” Brian asked. Munch sighed at the bluntness, but the kid was full of shit. And it worked better than kind old Grandpa Munch anyway.
“I did that to myself,” the kid said. He lifted his chin, probably being all defiant but it just showed the marks off more.
“Really?” Brian nearly took a step forward, but the kid twitched when his foot moved so he stayed in place. “The fingerprints look too big for your hand.”
The fight left the kid’s green eyes and he just looked tired for a second, the kind of bone-deep exhaustion Brian could recognize.
“Please, just let me leave,” he said. “I’m not - I… I’m fine. I swear.”
“Answer a few questions honestly and we’ll see what we can do,” Munch said. “Maybe we can start with your real name?”
“H - James,” the kid said. “James Longbottom.”
Brian couldn’t prove it, but the kid sounded like he was spewing more crap.
“And how old are you, James?” Munch asked, clearly not thinking much of it.
“Thirteen.”
Brian didn’t get the sense the kid was lying that time, so he was just smaller than average. Not hard to guess why.
“Where you from, James?” Munch stressed the name, looking over his glasses to the kid. Good, Cassidy was going to kick his ass into a nursing home if he missed the obvious lie.
“London.” The kid pretended to be casual as he walked to the bed, but his eyes flicked to the door too many times to be all easy and breezy. He perched on the edge of the bed, one foot tapping on the floor.
“Who brought you here?” Brian asked him.
The kid shrugged. “Am I under arrest?” he asked suddenly, evading the question. “If not, I’m free to go, right?”
“You sure know a lot about our system for being new here,” Munch pointed out. “When’d you get here?”
“This morning,” the kid snapped, his mood swinging sharply. “Your mum brought me. Can I go now? I’m not under arrest, you have no reason to keep me.”
“You think we can discharge a 13 year old on the streets?” Brian asked. “Give us an address, we’ll give you a ride home.”
“I would, but I don’t remember it and she only ever showed me the bedroom.”
Brian laughed and then hid it quickly behind a scoff. The kid was a smartass, but at least he still had a sense of humor.
“If you won’t tell us then we’re going to have to call ACS and they’re going to drag you to a foster home or group home until you give it up,” Brian warned him. “So what’s it gonna be? Us or them?”
The kid looked at Brian for a long second and Brian knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Piss off.”
So Brian didn’t know the exact words he was going to use, fine.
The kid wasn’t exactly a priority, so Munch alerted ACS to pick him up and Brian did his best to forget about him. It worked fine for a few days, until he got singled out by Cragen over the kid.
“Cassidy?”
Brian looked up from where he’d been teasing Olivia, some light flirting to waste time, to see the Captain looking right at him.
“Yeah?” Brian called. Brian didn’t do anything stupid lately to get his ass chewed by the captain, not with just ten days left in the unit.
“Mercy Hospital called, they’ve got a victim who asked for you by name,” Cragen said. “Munch is still in court and Olivia’s got a perp being brought in soon, so you’ll have to take this one solo.”
No big deal. Brian assumed it was a DV victim or a street girl who he interviewed before.
Brian didn’t expect it to be the kid from before, the one he handed off to ACS and tried to forget about. Nurse Sunshine wasn’t there and the one who was actually acted like she gave a damn.
“Medic said another kid accidentally pushed him down the stairs, looks like a broken clavicle, but we’re waiting on xray results,” she said.
“Why call me?” Brian asked. It wasn’t like he was going to pick up another kid if it was an accident.
“Because we got his bloodwork back from the last time he was here.” The nurse handed Brian a few pages stapled together. “Looks like your kid has syphilis."
God damn it.
Brian looked over the report while he tried to talk himself into going in the kid’s room. Some vitamin deficiencies, but it was the untreated syphilis that made Brian’s stomach drop every time he accidentally read it.
Nobody ever got syphilis from a toilet seat.
God, Brian really needed to get the fuck out of SVU.
The kid was on the hospital bed when Brian let himself in the room. All the fire he had before seemed to have burned itself out and the kid sighed at Brian before looking up at the ceiling.
“I’ll tell you my real name if you can help me get home,” he said flatly. “It was a lot easier getting here than it is getting out.”
“Yeah?” Brian pulled up a chair. There was an IV flowing, probably antibiotics. Brian tried to not look at it, just focusing on the kid. “How about you give me a name and then we talk and see what we can do?”
The kid didn’t say anything for a minute and then after he winced and made an aborted motion to rub his chest, he gave it up.
“Harry,” he said. “Harry Potter.”
Brian didn’t get the feeling he was lying then, nobody sounded like they hated their own name if they made it up, so Harry it was.
“What happened today?” Brian asked him, figuring they could work their way backwards. Harry glared up at the ceiling while his hand twitched toward the broken clavicle again.
“You people,” Harry paused glaring at the ceiling to temporarily glare at Brian, “sent me to some bloody house full of maniacs. I went to the loo and one of them pushed me down the stairs.”
Ugh, group homes.
“Some of those kids are dicks,” Brian offered. “I’ll talk to your caseworker when they get your discharge set up. If we can find a relative or something…”
It was a twitch of his lips, that was it. That was the only clue that Brian had to work off.
And nine times out of ten - it was someone the kid knew. A relative, teacher, friend. Their coach.
“Unless that’s not a good choice for some reason,” Brian said. “You tell me.”
“They don’t want me back and my parents are dead,” Harry said. “But I’ve got school starting September 1st and they will notice if I’m not there.”
“That’s in three weeks,” Brian pointed out. “How are you going to go to school if your relatives don’t want you there and I can’t release you on the streets?”
“It’s a boarding school,” Harry said. “I - I shouldn’t even be here, I just… wanted to get away from it all.”
Yeah, Brian could see that. Hell, Brian tried to run away fifty times as a kid just to get out of baseball practice.
“Get away from what?” Brian asked, digging as carefully as he could. There was a fucking elephant sized diagnosis in the room and they were going to have to circle around to it.
“Dunno.” Harry tapped his finger, shrugged his shoulders. “Everything, I guess.”
“I get that,” Brian said, he did. “You can’t run from it all though, sometimes you just have to stand and face it.”
“Face it?” Harry turned his head again and scoffed at Brian. “Piss off, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
Nah, Brian did know. Brian knew exactly what he said and he knew exactly how hard it was. It wasn’t fair, telling a kid to do something Brian couldn’t, but that was the job.
“I know you caught an STD from whoever hurt you,” Brian said. “And I know that you’re lying there feeling embarrassed, ashamed. Hell, I bet you even feel guilty. But I know if you give me a name, I’ll make sure they can’t ever touch you again.”
Harry blinked slowly, something finally sparking in his eyes, then he looked away from Cassidy and went back to having a stare off with the dirty ceiling.
“You think I’m worried about my feelings?” Harry sneered. “I’m not.”
“No? So what do I not get?” Brian asked. If Olivia was there, she could hold Harry’s hand and get him to tell her everything with honey, all Brian had was vinegar. Something told him that honey wasn’t the right track with Harry anyway. The kid was too blunt, it didn’t seem like he was going to drop his act anytime soon so Brian had to meet him halfway.
“Nah, come on,” Brian said, pushing Harry. He wouldn’t break, Brian could tell. “Tell me, huh? You’re not worried about your feelings so you’re worried about the syphilis? Worried about being strangled? Come on, Harry, tell me. If you’re not worried about your feelings or this shit tearing your body up, what are you worried about? Huh? Come on, tell me!”
Brian would have kept going, but the kid hit his limit and blew up.
“SHUT UP, YOU BLOODY MUPPET!” Harry yelled.
Muppet was pretty funny for an insult, Brian might use it on Elliot at some point.
“YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME?” Harry demanded, sitting up so quickly it nearly yanked his IV out. “YOU KNOW NOTHING! YOU DON’T KNOW ME, YOU DON’T KNOW THEM, SO STOP ACTING LIKE YOU DO!”
Good, that was good. Harry could be pissed, Brian would be too. It was better to yell than to lock it all inside, and it made him slip up, share something he probably didn't mean to.
Them. Multiple abusers.
“Yeah?” Brian didn’t yell, but he got loud - wanted to keep pushing. If he backed down, the kid would clam up and eventually end up right back in the hands of his abusers. “What don’t I know? What do you think I don’t know about this?”
"YOU KNOW NOTHING!" Harry screamed. "HE GAVE ME SOME BLOODY DISEASE AND YOU THINK IT JUST EXPLAINS EVERYTHING?” Harry laughed, hysterical. “You’ve got no idea,” he hissed again. “None. So don’t play your word games with me, you won’t win.”
Brian didn't know where they were headed, not exactly, but he knew that Harry was almost there.
"What don't I know?" Brian asked, pulling back, making himself safe. "Tell me, Harry. What is it that I don't know?"
“IT IS MY FAULT!” Harry’s voice broke and Brian could see him fighting to keep it locked down, all that rage and pain and hurt. Screaming helped, but crying? If he cried, then it would be admitting that someone hurt him.
“IT’S MY FAULT!” Harry yelled again. “IT’S MY FAULT! IT IS—”
The problem was shoving shit down was that sometimes someone might shove too much shit down and then, at the worst possible fucking times, it would break free.
A sob ripped through the kid, bending his body right in half. It couldn’t be comfortable, his broken clavicle pressing on his kneecap, but Brian doubted Harry even felt it. Brian didn’t pat the kid’s back, he didn’t have to.
All Brian had to do was be there.
And when Harry could hear him, when the kid could hear anything over his own cries and whatever shit he had circling in his head, Brian just had to make sure someone told him -
"It's not your fault."
Someone had to tell him.
It didn’t even really surprise Brian when he found himself sitting bedside with Harry the next few days. They didn’t talk about anything serious, Brian knew they didn’t need to. Brian talked about the Nets, Harry talked about how much he hated New York.
Brian didn’t interrogate the kid much, there wasn’t any point to it. The kid was a vic who gave him about two lines for closure - one abuser was never leaving a hospital he lived in and the other one was the relative who never wanted him back.
Harry didn't explain which was which, Brian didn't need to ask. Harry could say the name of his uncle, just a first name, he wouldn't even spell the name of the other one.
The squad did searches to find a family, but Harry James Potter born July 31st thirteen years ago didn’t exist anywhere in any official records. Harry didn’t know jack about where he was born, he only knew his aunt and uncle’s names - it wasn't like Brian was going to contact either of them.
It made it tricky when the hospital started talking about discharge. Harry had his first course of antibiotics completed, they wanted the bed opened up for the next sad sack they had come through the doors.
“Where the hell is he supposed to go, huh?” Brian demanded from the nurse. “You want me to send him back to a fucking group home? A lot of good that did for him!”
“I am running a hospital, not a foster home,” she snapped right back. “Aren’t you the police? You find a place for him to go. I’m telling you, he’s being discharged.”
"There isn't anywhere for him to go!" Brian snapped, pissed at the wrong person. "Nobody's jumping to claim this kid!"
"Detective..."
God damn—
Brian spun around and saw the kid standing in the doorway of his room, dressed in the closest fitting outfit Brian could put together from SVU’s closet for kids. For half a second, there was a crack in Harry’s mask, then it closed up and he pasted a breezy smile on his face.
“Guess I’ll be going,” Harry said lightly. “I've got it from here, really. Thanks for - er… anyway, thanks, Cassidy.”
Harry got about three steps away while Brian tried to think of a better choice, any better fucking choice. When the kid - when that kid - turned a corner and it felt like Brian got pushed out of a ten story window, he ran after him.
“Hold up.” Brian caught Harry at the elevator and he caught the side-eye Harry gave him. “Why don’t you come back to the squad room with me?” Brian asked, shooting from the hip. “We’ll grab dinner, turn on the game, figure out what to do.”
“I told you what I’m doing.” Harry had one backpack of shit he had with him - Brian went through it, all he could find was a satin purple sheet, a stick, and some paper that looked like it had been stolen from a museum.
Abused kids kept weird shit, Brian didn’t know what any of it meant to Harry, but it clearly did mean something to him and jackshit to Brian.
“That’s right, you’re going to wait until September first when someone from your school is magically going to know where you are, they’ll pop up, then you’ll magically have a valid passport to travel back to your super secret boarding school that doesn’t actually exist.” Brian scoffed as he pressed the down button Harry didn’t push before Brian caught up to him.
Maybe he didn’t know it needed pushed, some foreign thing, or maybe he wanted to give Brian a chance to catch up.
“It’s a good plan, man, I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying you can fit some pizza and basketball in the schedule,” Brian shrugged. “Your choice, kid. I’m not making you do a damn thing.”
It wasn't that Brian thought anyone could make Harry do anything he didn't want to do, never again, but he sure as shit wasn't going to try.
Harry rocked on his heels, not saying anything, until the doors opened for them. They both leaned on opposite sides of the elevator, both of them had their arms crossed and different shit on their minds.
“No pineapple,” Harry said. "A nurse gave me a slice of hers, it was rubbish."
“No shit,” Brian said. "You don't put fruit on pizza."
“The Nets are rubbish too."
“Two days ago you didn’t even know what basketball was.”
“And somehow I still know the Nets suck.”
Brian grinned, Harry grinned.
*****
Man.
Harry didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or scream.
Everything bloody sucked.
And the stupidest part? The part that made Harry a complete dumbass? Harry thought he was going to win. Harry really thought he could destroy the last of the horcruxes and then put Riddle down like a dog.
It wasn’t like Harry wanted to kill him to start with, but even Cassidy said there was no locking up a guy like him. There wasn’t an end to Tom Riddle that wasn’t death.
So Harry was going to do it, no sweat.
Except Harry was a horcrux and Riddle didn’t die unless Harry did. There was the old itching idea of doing it himself, taking that pleasure from Riddle, but Harry wasn’t a coward and he wasn’t a bitch. If Riddle wanted to feel like a badass for AK’ing Harry, then… whatever.
Harry started to walk in the forest after passing his last job to Neville, when he paused.
Someone was going to have to tell Cassidy what happened, did Harry really want that to be Ron or Hermione?
There was a phone in Harry’s pocket that he tapped his fingers on. No, Harry couldn’t let it be them. They liked Cassidy fine, but they didn’t get Cassidy like Harry did - they didn’t get Harry like Cassidy did.
If Harry was going to let himself get taken down in the line of duty, he’d be damned if he didn’t man up and tell Cassidy himself.
It was the least Harry could do.
For Cassidy? It was the very least Harry could do.
Harry had about ten minutes until he had to stand before Riddle, it was enough time for a last call. Harry fidgeted with the snitch Dumbledore left him, he toyed with the stone that had been locked inside it.
Then he pressed redial for the only number Harry ever called.
The phone was from Cassidy, it would be pretty damn shitty if Harry didn’t use it to call him. They couldn’t talk much during the school year and it wasn’t like Harry had a lot of spare time during his last year on the run. Cassidy also took on a lot of undercover jobs, nothing that overlapped with summer break or winter holidays. It worked out okay that Cassidy was stuck on a big case last Christmas, it meant Harry didn’t need to make his own excuse for why it wasn’t safe to travel to New York.
Even if Harry told Cassidy maybe he could ‘magically pop himself back home’. That line never got old, really. Harry probably mocked him with it a million times since they first met.
Cassidy’s phone rang a few times and Harry didn’t let his expression shift, but his stomach dropped when he thought about the likelihood of Cassidy answering. It wasn’t seven there yet, but Cassidy could be underground, unable to answer.
The others joined Harry, but they didn’t matter just yet. Harry would have eternity with them, he only had a few minutes left for the first person that… well, Harry had a few minutes for Cassidy.
And Harry really needed him to answer. It wasn’t exactly a sunshine and rainbow filled voicemail he’d have to leave if —
“Harry, hey.”
The ropes around Harry’s lungs loosened and he could have been thirteen again, waiting to see if Cassidy would follow him, secretly relieved when he did.
“Hey.” Harry leaned a shoulder against a tree and kept his voice even. “You - you’re free?” he checked. Stupid. It was a stupid thing to ask. If Cassidy wasn’t free, he wouldn’t answer.
“Yeah, wrapping up this paperwork now,” Cassidy said. “You good, man? You sound…”
“Me? No, I’m good.” Harry tried to force a laugh, but it got stuck. Fuck, it got stuck. Harry looked up, tried to work it loose. Then it came out strained, choked.
“What’s going on?” Cassidy asked, seeing right through Harry’s bullshit. “Don’t tell me that Umbitch chick is back?”
Umbridge? No. But, man, Cassidy hated her more than Harry did. It pissed Cassidy off that he couldn’t show up to Hogwarts himself, so he settled for writing Sirius and telling him to deal with it or Cassidy would.
Harry was going to miss Sirius until the day he died - that day, apparently - but Sirius and Cassidy were gasoline and fire together.
Sirius winked at him, maybe somehow guessing at Harry’s thoughts.
“No, it’s - uh… V- Riddle,” Harry said. Voldemort was nothing more than a nickname that gave Riddle power, Harry would call him Riddle and fuck whoever didn’t like it.
“Here’s a tip, muppet, don’t go chasing him,” Cassidy said, sharp but Harry figured most of it was worry. Cassidy wouldn’t admit it, but Harry scared the hell out of him when he got home from his fifth year and told him about what happened in the Ministry of Magic.
“I…” Harry sighed and ran his free hand down his face after pocketing his wand - not like he needed it - and the stone. “There’s no choice this time. I have to."
Cassidy didn’t go quiet, they didn’t really do quiet. Harry yelled, Cassidy yelled. It horrified Hermione, but it worked for them. So when Cassidy got loud, it was comforting.
“Bullshit,” he said. “That’s bullshit, Harry. There is always, fucking always, a choice.”
Harry’s eyes stung, he fixed them on a leaf nearby, refusing to blink. If he blinked, he might cry and he wasn’t going out like that.
“Not this time,” Harry said.
There were choices before, there were a lack of choices before. Nothing quite like walking to his death, though syphilis hadn’t been a walk in the bloody park.
It might have been Harry’s whisper, it might have been the whole shitty situation. Cassidy got louder, like he was trying to egg Harry into fighting for something he wouldn’t actually get to have.
“The fuck there isn’t,” Cassidy said without a pause. “You think - do you really think we spent the last five years putting all your pieces together just for this - for you to… to what? Hand yourself over like a martyr? Screw that, man. We’ll figure out Riddle, but we’re doing it together from now on, you hear me? You get your ass on a portkey and come home. You don’t get to make this call without me.”
It was all the right words, it was what Harry needed to hear. It didn’t change anything, but it was what he needed to hear before he left.
They didn’t do awkward hugs, they did pizza and basketball. They didn’t watch baseball, they didn’t talk about how much Harry’s second year fucked with his head and left scars he saw in every accidental reflection. They didn’t need to.
Cassidy just kind of… he kind of got it, most of the time.
“I am the only one who gets to make this call,” Harry told him. He was running out of time, there wasn’t time for an argument, even one buried under good intentions.
Lily stood beside him, silent comfort.
“Look, I just called because - I dunno. I didn’t want someone lying to you, after it’s done. I’m not running from what I have to do - I’m - I’m going to stand and face it, alright? And I… I probably couldn’t, if it wasn’t for everything you’ve done.”
Everything - that was what Cassidy did for him.
Cassidy’s breath was choppy on the phone, harsh. Harry couldn’t blink, Cassidy couldn’t break. That wasn’t what they did.
“Please.” Cassidy’s jaw would be working, the way it did when he talked about a case that hit too close to home or a victim’s name he saw in the paper. “Harry, please. Don’t - don’t do this, alright? Just come home, kid. We can find another option. I’ve got a surprise too. Nothing lame, alright it’s kind of lame, but you’ll like it. Maybe.”
Harry’s time was up, he knew it and Cassidy had to know it too if he was offering up bribes.
“If I have to face it, you do too,” Harry said, as painfully blunt for Cassidy as he had to be for Harry too many bloody times to count. “I’m sorry.”
Harry took a breath and knew it was time. It was time to hang up, it was time to face it.
“Bye, Dad,” he said.
Cassidy cursed and when Harry lifted his eyes, it was James Potter who stood across from him. him.
“He was good for you,” was all James said. “I’m sorry.”
Harry shook his head and powered off the phone, cutting through Cassidy trying to call him back.
“Don’t be,” Harry said, shaking it all off and slowly slipping the mask back on - the one that said he didn’t give a damn about any of it. “Let’s go face death.”
Sirius didn’t go with him, Harry didn’t question it. Cassidy liked Sirius, Sirius liked him. Harry had two of his parents, it was fine if Sirius wanted to go wait with Cassidy.
*****
It was probably real fucking lucky that the air was knocked from Brian’s chest, keeping him from yelling. If he yelled, he would have missed the kid’s last two words before the line went dead —
“Bye, Dad.”
Brian’s breaths became choppy, pained. He called Harry back over and over and fucking over.
“No, no, no.” Brian tried again, he put his phone to his ear and willed Harry to answer.
“It’s me. Leave a message.”
What could Brian say? What could he say that Harry might hear before he did something stupid?
“If you do something stupid I am going to kick your ass,” Brian said - all wrong, all fucking wrong. What was he supposed to do though? Cry and beg? “Harry, call me, please.”
Did he lose him? Did he really lose him? Because Harry didn’t sound like he was going to fight, he sounded like he was going to give up.
Brian nearly threw his phone, he almost did, then goosebumps erupted on his arm and he thought about how big of a dick he’d feel like if he broke the only way Harry had to get ahold of him.
And then, with fuck all that he could do, Brian went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of scotch from the cabinet. Who needed a cup? Who needed ice?
Who needed some ‘well intentioned’ fucking stupid adoption papers to give Harry when he turned 18?
Apparently not Brian.
Brian emailed his half-assed case report to the district prosecutor, sent a text to his boss, and then spent about three days in a pity party from hell. Brian had a lot of pity parties, he was a God damned expert in them most of the time, but he never had one before that was spent drunk with a voicemail message playing over and over.
Brian never had a kid before either, but that was what Harry was - Brian’s kid, his boy. Brian never even wanted kids, it was some freak accident that he wound up with one. Every time Brian called and met voicemail, he figured that it was it, Brian had him and he lost him.
He lost him.
By the time that Harry’s phone died and every call was sent directly to voicemail, Brian stopped leaving messages and just let Harry’s clipped tone play in his ear.
They got - what? Five summers together? Five fucking summers and four Christmas breaks? What kind of crap was that? Other parents got fifty years and Brian got five summers. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t.
Harry fought his ass off to get as far as he did, Brian couldn’t imagine that he was just gone.
Poof, fucking gone.
Every replay of his voicemail brought him back though, so Brian laid in his bed, stared up at his stupid quidditch posters, and called him again.
“It’s me. Leave a message.”
“You’re in my bed.”
Brian was losing it, completely cracking up, but he pressed the phone harder against his ear, his fingers too numb from the booze to even feel it. “Harry?”
“Cassidy.”
It took a second, a second of being drunk and stupid and crying in his kid’s bed like a damned idiot, before Brian realized it wasn’t coming from the phone, it was–
Brian turned his head, too hopeful, and was sucker-punched by the sight of Harry standing in his doorway, a filthy backpack in one hand, his set of keys in the other hand, and his invisibility cloak tossed over his shoulder.
Harry was at least fifteen pounds smaller than he’d been in August, there were half a dozen new scars that Brian could see off the bat, and he looked like he could use about five days of sleep.
It was Harry though, the case that crawled under Brian’s skin and rooted himself in there. It was Brian’s kid, standing in the doorway with a dumbass half-grin and something undoubtedly sarcastic to say on the tip of his tongue.
“Think we could order a pizza?” Harry asked, darting away from the fifty questions Brian had. “I had to fly here, which sucked, by the way.”
Order a pizza? It was five thirty in the morning.
“Yeah,” Brian said as the warmth slowly filled his body again, defrosting the freeze that had suffocated him since hearing Harry on the phone. “You want extra pineapples, right?”
Harry laughed, weak and shaky, then tossed his bag so he could cross the room, casually climbing in the bed where Brian still laid - like that in itself wasn’t a crazy win.
“No shit,” Harry said, dropping his head on Brian’s arm and trapping him in place. Harry yawned, closed his eyes. “Wake me up when it’s here.”
Harry's breathing evened out, Brian's did too.
Brian’s arm went to sleep about four minutes after Harry did, not that he was in any rush at all to move it.
Because the thing was... Brian didn’t like kids, not really.
Just one kid - his.