Dresden Files FIC: Coming Home (2/?)
Title: Coming Home (2/?)
Characters: Bob, Harry.
Rating: PG-13 (for one word. You might even miss it :).
Book or TV: TV
Words: 3062-ish
Warnings: Angst. As it was in the first chapter, but it’s a bit lighter this time around…I think. o_o
Spoilers: Takes place before the series, but references events from “What About Bob?” quite a bit.
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files in no way belongs to me.
Original Posting Date: October 20, 2007, here at dresdenfic .
Summary: Bob worries over what the future might hold for Harry.
Author’s Note: Posted obscenely late. Yikes! O_O Also, still written for my LJ friend, joonscribble. Part one is here, but it’s not 100% necessary to read that first as I think that all chapters in this will be a little bit stand alone-ish, even if they do all progress in the same direction. *G*
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At some point between Harry’s arriving at his late uncle’s estate and the wizard’s distressed ransacking of the place, it had begun snowing. Bob knew he would be able to watch the pale flakes drifting lightly down from the sky if he bothered to turn around, but his attention was, as it were, divided by the sight of Harry walking past him, an armful of dangerous books held tightly in the wizard’s grasp. Ordinarily, this would not have been any great thing to contemplate-Harry had long been known to carry around any number of dangerous books during his time as Bob’s student-but as a result of one very significant fact, Bob cared a great deal. For at the bottom of this stack of books that Harry was carrying, its faded leather spine hauntingly familiar, was Bob’s first grimmoiré.
As Harry sank to his knees on the fireplace’s mantle and lay down his load beside the shadowed place, Bob shifted uncomfortably beside him.
“Harry,” the ghost lightly protested, but Harry only began to un-stack the books and lay them, one by one, into the darkness of the fireplace. Each bookfall seemed to echo even louder than the last until finally, Harry had reached the bottom of the pile and was stretching his fingers towards the last book-Bob’s book. The ghost swallowed as he watched the wizard’s fingers close around the book’s ancient binding. “Harry,” he repeated, more insistently than the first time. Hearing the urgency in Bob’s call, the wizard paused. Knowing he had Harry’s attention, even though the wizard was not looking at him, Bob continued, “Do you really believe this to be necessary? Really, absolutely necessary?”
Tightening his hold on the grimmoiré, Harry sighed, his free hand reaching up to rub away the ache growing behind his eyes. “You know it is, Bob,” he said, wearily. Without waiting for Bob to protest further, Harry wordlessly tossed the book into the fireplace. As the grimmoiré settled up against the books already set up for burning, Harry reached forward and lightly tapped the edge of the chalk circle he had earlier scribbled around the fireplace. The protective sigils glowed a sharp blue for a split second, accompanied by a brief flashing of air above the books in the shape of a dome, and then both faded. Sufficiently convinced that the wards he had set up would hold, Harry rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, calling forth a brief spark of orange flame that hovered a few inches above his palm. Inhaling briefly, he blew the fire through the shielded area and into the circle.
Bob bit down on his lip as the orange flame struck the books, wavered briefly, and then rushed upwards in a sea of green fire. The sudden change in air pressure within the bubble caused the books to shake, his grimmoiré being blown open to reveal sharply written words on every page. His old handwriting, he mused, as the pages trembled and flipped past. Somehow, he could barely recognize it, but did not have very much time to reflect upon this as the flames had already begun their work on the old books. Beginning at the edges, the paper slowly darkened, gleaming green sparks converging on the center of the book until its pages that he could see were the same faded color as what he had written upon them.
Beside him, Harry slowly stood, his joints creaking slightly in protest. When he had become so aged, he would never know. “You don’t have to watch this,” he muttered, rubbing the fire-induced dryness from his eyes.
Breathing deeply, Bob tried to regain his rapidly wavering composure. “I know,” he stated, quietly. “But why not? I see nothing better for me to do.”
In reply, Harry merely nodded, his jaw set firmly as he gauged the burning of the books beneath him. With some small trace of lingering irritation, the wizard noted that they were taking an unnaturally long time to burn. It seemed the residual magic that Bob and other writers like him had tied into their books was still strong enough to protect them, regardless of how futile their security measures would eventually be. He sighed, wanting to complain about this, but a quick glimpse in Bob’s direction, and more so to the barely repressed version of terror flickering through the ghost’s eyes, made it seem more right for him to remain silent, despite any reservations he might have had against it.
With a sigh, Harry merely turned back to the fireplace and let his eyes slip shut, allowing the warmth of the flames to battle the atmosphere of the otherwise cold room.
Having glimpsed Harry looking at him and then looking away, Bob turned his attention away from his grimmoiré and instead to Harry, who was then huddled up in his coat with his neck and hands barely visible, yet-for the moment, at least-apparently content. The ghost wondered if it was altogether healthy for Harry to be finding comfort in the face of the destruction of anything, even something so dark, but he dismissed this notion almost immediately. Harry was calm, and far be it for Bob to disturb that.
But still-his book, he helplessly thought. It was Harry’s fault that it was dying, and it was Harry deriving comfort from the heat the act was causing to form. How badly Bob wanted to become enraged, but the more logical, less emotional side of him reminded him of how pointless it would be to complain. The books were already burning and he would be with Harry for at least a little while, so he might as well try not to ‘make waves’ while he remained in Harry’s possession.
Still, this self-reassurance did not change the ways in which the current moment was affecting him.
Feeling irritable, Bob transferred his gaze from Harry to his books, whose engraved markings on their covers apparently still held enough power, even after so many years, to not allow Bob the decency of letting the pages burn quickly away. Upon the creation of his grimmoirés, he knew he had wanted them to be nearly indestructible, but this clearly had not worked out very well for him as all it had done was increase the time in which he was forcing himself to watch as this one remaining one was destroyed. It certainly did not help that time already seemed to be progressing so slowly.
Unable to make himself move back from or at least look away from the flames, Bob nearly shuddered. It was as if the fire assaulting the remaining traces of his mortal life were burning across his own skin, and not merely across a collection of faded, yellowed paper. No matter how hard he tried to block out the sudden feelings cascading violently through his mind, he could not. There were too many memories in those books, too many things he had tried to forget but always wanted to remember. Too much of anything and all at once. For a second, Bob found it difficult to breathe, despite the fact that it was always impossible for him to do so, and everything around him was going far too fast, even though those damned books were dissipating so incredibly-
“Bob,” Harry suddenly spoke up, breaking the ghost out of his reverie. “I think Morgan wanted to kill me in there.”
Blinkingly turning his gaze away from the sight of his burning grimmoiré, Bob stared at the wizard standing beside him and then furrowed his brow, finding it slightly irritating that of all the moments Harry could have had an epiphany of sorts, he had chosen this one to do so in.
“Harry,” the ghost assured, quietly, “you know how Morgan is. No social graces. Absolutely none, whatsoever. Did he ever bring you a gift for any of your birthdays? Clearly he was never loved as a child. You cannot blame yourself for the faults of his parents.”
The tiniest of laughs escaped Harry’s throat, quickly quelled as he turned back to the fireplace. “That isn’t funny, Bob,” he said.
“You seemed to find amusement enough in it,” Bob immediately replied, inspiring another weak smile from the wizard.
“Yeah,” Harry said, “guess I did.” His smile remained for a moment more, but then it faltered.“Sorry about your books,” he said.
Inhaling deeply, Bob tried not to snap at the weakened wizard about the loss of one of his few remaining ties to the power he had once possessed, but no longer did. “They are just books, Harry,” he tried to convince himself, gazing upon the flickering green flames in the fireplace. “Just…” A spark blew outwards from the fire, striking the protective shield Harry had cast around the fireplace with a definitive crackle. In shock, Harry took a few steps backwards, but Bob remained where he was, standing just outside of the border.
“Books,” the ghost flatly concluded, as the flame safely receded back to eating away at the ghost’s former possessions.
Taking a few additional steps backwards, Harry made sure he had a table between himself and the fireplace before finally leaning on the wooden surface and slowly sinking into the chair just behind it. “They’re not ‘just’ books, Bob,” the wizard muttered, sending a half-hearted glare in the direction of the slowly darkening book covers in his uncle’s fireplace. “I’ll be glad to get rid of them.”
“But of course,” Bob drawled, turning his back on the wizard and facing the fire. “I know how utterly you despise them.” He could not help the trace of bitterness that accompanied his words, yet was still somehow ashamed by it as Harry seemed to catch onto its presence.
“It’s not who you are anymore, Bob,” Harry growled, putting what the ghost thought was an unnecessarily fierce emphasis on the name.
Exhaling slowly, Bob momentarily turned to face Harry. “But it still was,” he declared, some desperate impulse within him suddenly wanting this to be known. The wizard only glared back at him, his fists curling around the tabletop. But a surge of tiredness seemed to come over the wizard at that moment and he bit back any harsh response he might have had.
“Whatever,” he murmured, easing his grip on the table and allowing his head to sink to it. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t keep the book. Just get over it; it’s over.”
Bob bristled. “You expect me to just get over-” the former sorcerer began to demand, but instead paused in his trail of thought, some secondhand sense suddenly alerting him to the fact that Harry had fallen asleep. Evidently the wizard, perhaps despite his greater intentions, had set himself down on a chair far too convenient for staying awake in.
While Bob could have allowed himself to marvel at this rapid slumber, the ghost simply bit down on his lip and pressed a hand to his forehead to calm himself. When he thought the barest traces of rationality had returned to his mind, he turned back around to view the inside of the fireplace. The books inside of it seemed to have finally reached a point at which their protective spells were weakening, but this made their destruction no more difficult to watch.
Ever so slowly, the last readily available traces of his mortal life curled in on themselves, page by familiar page burning away until at last all that remained were the book covers. And even those only took a few additional minutes to be destroyed, their leather bindings twisting upwards with a defiant hiss of air and then exploding outwards, the entire holding field becoming engulfed by a black cloud of dust that lingered in the air for several minutes before dissipating forever into an endless state of obscurity.
Pocketing his hands to keep them from twitching involuntarily, Bob crouched down to ensure that his book was really and truly gone. He found that it was.
“And good riddance to you, as well,” the ghost muttered bitterly into the empty fireplace, although he kept his voice level to avoid waking Harry. Sparing the empty space one last, lingering glance, he then turned away.
Straightening his back, Bob stepped away from the mantel and walked over to the table Harry was slumped across. The position the wizard was in implied that he would regret having slept in that particular place upon awakening, but after weighing the pros and cons of a few sore muscles versus a vehicle crashed into a tree due to its driver not having had sufficient sleep, Bob decided to let the wizard remain as he was and merely walked to stand beside him, one eyebrow uplifted as he quietly assessed the condition of his former student.
There was no way he could think of to put it gracefully-the wizard looked awful. His hair, which Bob had not escaped noting that Harry had seemed quite self-conscious about in his presence, was matted in some places and stuck up in a variety of ways in others while his face, a bit more drawn and thin than Bob was used to seeing, had dark shadows beneath his eyes, signifying that the wizard had not slept well in quite some time. In addition, the once-pristine clothing the wizard’s uncle had once insisted he wear (“For appearances, Harry,” as Bob recalled hearing Morningway once declare to a much younger Harry, “You never know what circumstance might occur that will require you to be looking your best.”) had been replaced by a simple pair of slacks and a threadbare old sweater. Only Harry’s familiar, expensive wool coat remained, and like everything else the wizard was wearing it, too, hung loosely about the wizard’s frame. Bob supposed that he should only be grateful that the wizard was even alive, as for a time the ghost had truly wondered if he would be, but this thought did very little to keep Bob’s concern for the wizard’s well-being from growing.
Beside the ghost and apparently unaware that he was being scrutinized, the wizard slept on, his back rising and falling slightly with every breath that escaped his lungs. In sleep, at least, the wizard looked somewhat at peace, which was a painfully distant contrast from the mostly unstable individual Bob had first seen when Harry had entered the mansion a few hours before.
Clenching his jaw in a brooding sort of silence, Bob hesitantly reached up to brush a hand across the wizard’s hair, as if an act of will alone would allow him to smooth out the messier parts of it, but his hand, predictably, went right on through without dislodging a single dark strand. Sighing, the ghost lowered his arm and instead simply continued to stand beside the sleeping wizard, trying to figure out if it would be possible for Harry to dig himself out of the mess he had foolishly thrown himself into.
It would certainly not be an easy thing to accomplish, he realized, as he crossed his arms in thought. And especially not if Morgan’s earlier visit had been any indication at all of how Harry’s future would unfold. The wizard would be hated, perhaps feared, and blocked off from the magical community, his every move carefully picked apart as individuals far above him tried to determine if he would ever again become a threat worthy of being extinguished. To Bob, it seemed as if the whole of Harry’s world was rapidly becoming a very dark place, a fate the ghost could not image ever wishing upon the wizard resting beneath him.
And yet it seemed inevitable now. The deed had been done. Morningway had been vanquished. The day saved, yet the defender tainted forever by a single moment in time in which his control had briefly slipped, allowing a darker rage to fill up all of the little places control had abandoned. It all seemed so utterly without a proper solution. Bob could only imagine what would occur next, and his thoughts did little to comfort him.
Beneath him, Harry stirred, but did not awaken. Deciding to let the wizard sleep, Bob turned his attention to the windows as he waited to bring Harry out of the nightmares that would surely come. He had not been there for Harry for quite some time; the wizard’s frantic escape had assured that, but he might as well be there for him now, when he could be.
Outside of the windows, snow continued to fall, reflecting moonlight against the grounds outside and making everything appear sharply visible, even at the late hour. Pursing his lips, Bob found himself enjoying the sight of the grounds lit up by something that was unlike sunlight and yet also so similar. After all, despite everything, it really was quite beautiful.
Turning once more to glance over his shoulder at Harry, who was still sleeping, Bob felt the faintest traces of a fond smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. But the expression was gone almost as soon as it had come, fully replaced by a concerned frown. Around them both lay the scattered remnants of a house torn apart, Harry having been incredibly thorough in his extermination of anything in his uncle’s former home that could be used for dark purposes. The furniture had all been moved at least once, the possessions in the room all strewn about in various locations and all accessible magical items placed either in boxes in the hallway or done away with to the best of Harry’s ability. No traces of familiarity lingered where the two of them were, only a distant, unfamiliar coldness that even Bob thought he could feel and wondered if Harry was also aware of, even in sleep.
Swallowing, Bob took a step closer to Harry, as if he could somehow block out the cold instead of causing it, or perhaps for some other, more deeply felt reason that he did not want to admit to (fear, perhaps? He did not know and did not care to speculate), and went back to looking outside of the window. As Harry would until morning came to cast its rays upon the brilliantly white snow covering the ground outside, the wizard slept on, unaware that, for the entire course of the night, Bob never once left his side.
~October 20, 2007.