Harry woke to the smell of something burning.
For a moment, he lay perfectly still on John's bed, trying to place the unfamiliar sounds. There was cursing—creative, imaginative cursing that would have made Uncle Vernon reach for his belt—and the clatter of what sounded like pots and pans being hurled about with considerable force.
The events of the previous night came flooding back. The alley. John Constantine. The flat. The promise that he'd never have to go back to Privet Drive.
Harry sat up carefully, testing whether this was real or just another dream that would dissolve when Aunt Petunia banged on his cupboard door. But no—he was still in John's cramped bedroom, surrounded by books with titles like "Practical Demonology" and "The Darker Arts of Binding," wearing the man's oversized t-shirt as makeshift pajamas.
"Bollocking piece of—" The cursing from the kitchen reached new creative heights, followed by what sounded like a smoke alarm.
Harry slipped out of bed and padded toward the kitchen, his bare feet silent on the cold floorboards. He found John standing in a cloud of acrid smoke, glaring at a frying pan as if it had personally offended him. What might have once been eggs was now a blackened, smoking mass that looked more like a failed alchemical experiment.
"Bloody hell," John muttered, waving a tea towel at the smoke alarm until it stopped shrieking. "How hard can it be to cook a bloody egg?"
"You have to turn the heat down," Harry said quietly from the doorway.
John spun around, looking harassed. His hair was sticking up at odd angles, and there was a smudge of what looked like soot on his cheek. "Right. Course you'd know how to cook. Six years old and you're more domestic than I am."
Harry shifted uncomfortably. "Aunt Petunia made me do the cooking. Said if I was going to be expensive to feed, I might as well make myself useful."
John's expression darkened, but he just nodded toward the smoking pan. "Right then. Think you can salvage this disaster?"
"I... I could try?" Harry offered hesitantly. "If you want me to."
"Want's got nothing to do with it," John said, stepping aside. "At this rate, we'll both starve before I figure out how normal people eat."
Harry approached the stove carefully, turning off the heat and examining the damage. The eggs were beyond saving, but there were more in the fridge, and the pan could be cleaned.
"It's not too bad," he said, surprising himself with how easily he fell back into old habits. "I can fix it."
John watched, fascinated and slightly horrified, as this small child competently scraped the burnt remains into the bin, scrubbed the pan clean, and started fresh. Harry moved around the tiny kitchen with practiced efficiency, like he'd been doing this his whole life.
Which, John realized with a twist of anger, he probably had been.
"How long have you been cooking for them?" John asked, lighting his morning cigarette.
"Since I was four," Harry said matter-of-factly, cracking eggs into the pan with steady hands. "Aunt Petunia said it was time I earned my keep."
John took a long drag, using the nicotine to keep his temper in check. "Four years old. Right. Of course it was."
Harry glanced at him nervously. "I don't mind. I like cooking. It's... peaceful."
The simple honesty in that statement hit John harder than he'd expected. This kid had been turned into a house elf before he could properly walk, and he was grateful for the abuse because it gave him a moment's peace.
"Well," John said gruffly, "from now on, you cook because you want to, not because you have to. And if I ever meet your Aunt Petunia, I'm going to have words with her."
"You can't," Harry said quickly, a note of panic in his voice. "If you make trouble, they'll send me away. To an orphanage or somewhere worse."
John studied the boy's face—the genuine terror at the thought of being abandoned again. "Harry, look at me."
Harry turned from the stove, spatula in hand.
"You're not going back to them. Ever. I don't care what I have to do or who I have to fight. You're staying here."
"But what if you change your mind?" The question came out small and broken. "What if I do something wrong, or the magic gets scary again, or—"
"Not happening," John interrupted firmly. "I've dealt with possessions, demon princes, and angels having midlife crises. One traumatized kid with a magical parasite is not going to scare me off."
Harry blinked at him, then turned back to the eggs before John could see his eyes water. No adult had ever made him that kind of promise before.
"Besides," John added, stubbing out his cigarette, "someone's got to teach you how to use all that power properly. Can't have you accidentally blowing up London."
"Could I really do that?" Harry asked, dividing the eggs between two plates.
"With the right kind of emotional explosion? Probably." John accepted his plate with the expression of a man receiving a miracle. "That's why we're going to spend today working on your control."
They ate in companionable silence, John marveling at the fact that a six-year-old had just made the best breakfast he'd had in months. Harry, meanwhile, was trying to process the surreal normality of sitting at a table with someone who didn't seem to resent his existence.
"Right then," John said, finishing his coffee. "Lesson one: basic awareness. You need to be able to sense magical signatures before they're on top of you."
He led Harry to the living room, clearing a space on the floor between the stacks of books and empty takeaway containers.
"Sit," John instructed, settling cross-legged across from Harry. "Close your eyes. I want you to think about yesterday, when you were in that alley. You felt something change, didn't you? Just before I showed up?"
Harry nodded, eyes squeezed shut. "The air felt... thick. Like before a thunderstorm."
"Good. That's your magical senses trying to tell you something. Most people ignore it, write it off as imagination. But you..." John reached out and tapped Harry's forehead gently. "You've got enough power that your senses are naturally sharp. We just need to teach you how to listen to them."
For the next hour, John walked Harry through basic exercises—feeling for magical signatures, identifying different types of supernatural presence, learning to distinguish between benign and hostile energies. Harry proved to be a remarkably quick study, his natural sensitivity making up for his lack of training.
"Brilliant," John said as Harry correctly identified the warding on the flat without opening his eyes. "Better than some apprentices I've known who've been at this for years."
Harry beamed at the praise, then his expression grew serious. "John? The thing in my head. Can you really keep it from taking over?"
"I can teach you to keep it contained," John said carefully. "Build mental walls, learn to recognize when it's trying to influence you. But getting rid of it completely... that's a bigger job. Might take some research."
"What if it gets stronger?" Harry's voice was small. "What if I can't control it?"
John was quiet for a moment, considering his words. He could lie, offer false reassurance. But the kid deserved honesty.
"Then we'll deal with that when it happens," he said finally. "But Harry, you're not in this alone anymore. Whatever comes, we'll face it together."
The simple certainty in John's voice seemed to settle something in Harry. He nodded, squaring his small shoulders.
"What's next?" he asked.
"Next," John said, standing and stretching, "we work on basic shielding. And then..." He looked around his cluttered flat with the expression of a man facing an impossible task. "Then we figure out how to make this place suitable for a kid to live in."
"I don't need much," Harry said quickly. "I'm used to small spaces."
"Yeah, well, I'm not used to having a flatmate," John replied. "Especially one who's not old enough to reach the top shelf."
He surveyed the chaos of his living space with new eyes. Books everywhere, empty bottles, mysterious stains on the carpet that might have been from magical experiments or just poor housekeeping. It was no place for a child.
"Right," he muttered. "Shopping. Christ help us both."
Two hours later, they stood in the middle of a department store, both looking deeply uncomfortable. Harry had never been shopping for anything that was actually for him, and John looked like he'd rather be performing an exorcism.
"So," John said, staring at the children's clothing section with the expression of a man facing down a hydra. "Clothes. You need... clothes."
A helpful shop assistant appeared at his elbow. "Can I help you find anything?"
"My... nephew," John said, the word feeling strange in his mouth. "Needs everything. His luggage got lost."
The woman looked between John—unshaven, nicotine-stained, wearing yesterday's clothes—and Harry, who was swimming in John's oversized t-shirt and looked like he hadn't had a proper meal in months.
"Of course," she said with professional politeness that didn't quite hide her concern. "Let's start with the basics, shall we?"
Twenty minutes later, Harry found himself with more clothes than he'd ever owned, plus a proper bed, bedding, and what the shop assistant insisted were "essentials" for a growing boy. John paid for everything without comment, though Harry noticed him wince slightly at the total.
"You didn't have to buy so much," Harry said quietly as they waited for a taxi.
"Course I did," John said, lighting a cigarette. "Can't have you walking around in my cast-offs forever. Besides," he added with a slight smile, "can't be worse than what I spent last month on whiskey and cigarettes."
The taxi ride back was quiet, Harry clutching a bag that contained his very first teddy bear—a impulse purchase by John who'd noticed Harry staring at it with barely concealed longing.
"John?" Harry said as they climbed the stairs to the flat.
"Yeah?"
"Are you sure about this? About me staying?"
John stopped on the landing and looked down at him. For a moment, his expression was unguarded, showing the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who'd spent years fighting battles no one else could see.
"Harry," he said finally, "I've made a lot of bad decisions in my life. Hurt people I cared about, failed when it mattered most. But taking you in? That's not one of them."
He ruffled Harry's hair, a gesture that was becoming familiar. "Besides, someone's got to teach you how to tell the difference between a binding circle and a summoning array. Can't have you accidentally calling up something nasty because you mixed up your Latin."
"That could really happen?" Harry asked, wide-eyed.
"Oh yeah," John said cheerfully, unlocking the flat door. "Happened to me when I was about your age. Took three priests and a very understanding demon to sort that mess out."
As they entered the flat, Harry looked around with new eyes. It wasn't much—cramped, cluttered, smelling of cigarettes and old magic. But it was his now. His home, with someone who wanted him there.
For the first time in his life, Harry Potter felt like he belonged somewhere.
"Right then," John said, setting down the shopping bags. "Let's get your room sorted, and then we'll work on those shielding exercises. Can't have you walking around London without proper magical defenses."
"What kind of defenses?" Harry asked, following John toward the bedroom.
"The kind that keep things from noticing how bloody powerful you are," John said. "Trust me, kid—in this business, sometimes the best defense is not being seen at all."
As John began clearing space for Harry's new belongings, neither of them noticed the small, ordinary-looking bird perched on the windowsill outside, watching their every move with distinctly unbird-like intelligence.