Fic: And The Horse You Rode In On; Harry Dresden; #03 Prank
Title And The Horse You Rode In On
Fandom: The Dresden Files (bookverse and TV-verse)
Characters: Harry Dresden, the Leanansidhe, Malcolm Dresden, Original Monster Character
Prompt: #03 -- Prank
Word Count: 2773
Rating: G
Summary: Joe Murphy: [Harry Dresden] got busted for joyriding in a stolen carriage...Which also makes him a horse thief. -- Second City.
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files most emphatically do NOT belong to me. The series belongs to Jim Butcher, ROC Books, the SciFi Channel and Lionsgate Entertainment. No profit is being made, nor is any copyright or trademark infringement intended.
Table: Conjure at Your Own Risk
***
I never meant to steal the horse. The carriage shouldn't count, because the horse was drawing the carriage at the time and I didn't know how to detach one from the other. Okay, I know not much was left of the carriage, but that was just collateral damage. But the horse...well, that was an accident.
Sort of.
Happened one summer in New York City, when I was about ten. Dad was working in a three-star hotel near Central Park then-one of his better venues. I was trying to find ways to help, which wasn't working very well. Dad was pretty adamant about my not using my magic in public. Or about my doing magic in public on purpose, because I kept doing magic by accident.
I was sitting out in front of the hotel one morning, not really doing much of anything, just looking at cars and trucks passing. I loved cars at that age. I loved speed. And cars-as well as other forms of machinery--were already starting to not love me.
So I was watching cars driving by, some speeding by, and I was wishing I could go that fast.
And a man drove up to the front of the hotel and parked a shiny carriage right in front of the door. And the carriage had a huge and beautiful black horse. I could just imagine myself riding it, galloping over the countryside. Never mind that there's no countryside in New York City.
The driver dismounted, hurried past me and sort of staggered into the hotel bar.
And a few minutes later, the horse started muttering to itself. Actually talking.
I didn't know about pookas.
So, being ten, I walked over to the horse. "WHAT did you just say?"
I wasn't expecting trouble. I blame fantasy literature for this. I really do.
Like I said, I didn't know about pookas. So I didn't know that he could smell magic on me, or that he knew I was a wizard. I didn't know that, in addition to being Sidhe shapeshifters, they're tricksters, troublemakers and masters of the lie of omission, or that enough wizards have tried to trick pookas out of their power to make them resent and fear us.
As I reconstruct it now, the pooka must have seen this as a golden opportunity to get free of his present owner and kill a pesky wizard before said wizard came into his full power. Because the first thing it said after I spoke to it was, "You...you can hear me? Then save me from a life of miserable slavery! Unhitch me. Free me from bridle and bit, and ride me to my homeland where you shall be honored for your valor."
Oh, it laid it on with a trowel. But, like I said, ten. I bought it. In spades.
What I couldn't do was unhitch the carriage. I had no idea how the harness and reins and bridle and bit all worked.
Finally, the pooka said, who was in a hurry to escape his driver, told me to untie the reins from a lamppost and get in the driver's seat.
That was no problem. I could manage knots. Dad taught me. He started with tying shoes and moved on up to ropes. I'd even managed to get him to show me how to remove handcuffs. I wasn't a bad escape artist, for a kid.
"I don't think that I'm going to be able to pass as the driver, though," I said doubtfully, as I picked at the knotted reins. "Even if no one realizes that I'm a kid, I'm too short. And I don't have a uniform or anything."
"It will not take us long to reach our destination," the pooka said. "I need only run fast enough and we will both be where we need to be, I swear it."
"What about the driver, though?" I asked. "Isn't he going to worry about you? Won't he think that someone stole you?"
"Possibly," said the pooka coolly. "Truly, I do not care."
"I don't want to steal!"
"Is it stealing if the horse you are taking gives you permission to steal it?"
I knew there was something wrong with that argument, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. "I...guess not."
"And you'd be freeing a slave, remember. Is that considered shameful among your people?"
"What? No!" I gave the reins a decisive tug, and they came free in my hands.
"Then stop worrying," said the pooka, "and climb up in the driver's seat."
And I did.
The pooka must have wanted to put a lot of speed between it and its owner, because he fairly flew down the street--faster than the North Wind, I swear.
And me? I was loving it. Cheering, whooping, waving my arms and laughing my head off. I was probably the most conspicuous horse thief in the history of the world, and I didn't even think about it.
I can only speculate what happened next. My best guess is that someone saw the carriage careening down the road and me waving my arms and shouting like a madman, thought, "If that child falls, he's going to be killed, and if he doesn't stop, he'll run over someone," and called the cops.
Because the next thing, there was a roadblock right in front of us.
It was at that point that I realized that I didn't know how to hit the brakes and that we were going too fast NOT to smash into the cop cars ahead.
"Horse! Turn! Turn NOW!"
The pooka could have ignored me. After all, I'd die in the smash-up, and my destruction was at least part of what it wanted. If anything saved me, it was faerie self-interest. The idea of confronting police, with their steel handguns and steel bullets and steel cars, not to mention tranquilizer darts, all of which they were all set to use as weapons against the horse, because it was only a horse...well, I don't think that set too well with someone from Faerie.
So instead, the pooka told me what to do. Reach out with my power. Grab hold of reality. Whisper a certain word. And open a door.
I couldn't even remember telling the pooka that I had power, and I had no idea how to grab reality, but I didn't have time to think about either. So I just focused on doing what it said and opening the door to...wherever. In my case, it was more like ripping a hole, but what the hell, it worked.
I landed on all fours in a snowbank.
My first thought was, YES! It worked! The second, following closely on the heels of the first, was, ...and Dad is gonna ground me for life.
I struggled to get to my feet, brushed off as much of the snow as I could, and rubbed my arms. It was bitterly, bone-chillingly cold, and I was dressed for July. I looked around, but there were no houses, barns or shed nearby for me to shelter in. I was calf-deep in snow somewhere in the middle of a pine wood. There was nothing else. No wind, no squirrels chattering or birds chirping-only black, ice-laden trees, a sky of the oppressive grey that you get just before a snowstorm, and shadowed snowbanks as far as the eye could see.
Even more worrying, the hole that I'd torn in reality was gone.
It occurred to me, rather belatedly, that my father grounding me might be the least of my problems.
"Horse?" I said, my voice sounding thin and jarring in the relentless silence of the wood. "Horse, you gotta tell me how to get out of here. I'll freeze to death in this cold."
Nothing. Not a word.
I glanced around, but didn't see a sign of a horse-or even a hoofprint.
"You will die here,wizard," said a voice like winter wind, "but not of the cold."
I spun around-and slipped on the snow underfoot.
The pooka was standing up. He was in humanoid form, and nearly naked, but even if he hadn't been shrugging free of his harness, I'd have known right away that he was no human shapeshifter. His eyes told me that much. They were empty. Like holes in a mask. I would have bolted if I could have stood up long enough.
Then he came at me with a knife. To this day I can see it-a hilt of stone, and a crystalline blade was made of unmelting ice. I think he just magicked it up.
It's never a good idea to panic a wizard, and right then I was sick with fear. I lashed out with everything--fists, feet, teeth...and magic. I couldn't get the earth of the Nevernever to obey me, but I had no trouble conjuring fireballs. Of course, I'd never used them as weapons before, and my aim was lousy, but...you use what you've got.
The pooka's charcoal grey skin swelled and blistered as a stray fireball struck him. I stopped, astonished and horrified. I'd never burned anyone before. He stared at me, and when he spoke, there was both fear and hate in its voice.
"Fire in winter. And from one so young." He shivered. "Opening a door is one thing-it's a talent of children--but a deliberate magical attack..."
He ran, speeding across the snow like the shadow of a cloud. I never found out what happened to him.
I looked around, hoping that the pooka wouldn't return and wishing that I dared to explore. But I didn't like the idea of wandering off and not finding out where the door to the wardrobe was. For one thing, I'd already gotten a few nasty cuts from the pooka's knife. Besides, there might be other things out there. Things less friendly than the pooka. Things like the horrors that used my closet as a nightly portal from the Nevernever.
It was probably just as well that I didn't know that casting spells in Faerie was tantamount to marking a map with I'M HERE in big red letters.
Consequently, I was still trying to figure out where I was and how to get back when a hunting party, attracted by my magic, rode into the area where I was. One of the party--not the leader--was a woman with long red hair, the eyes of a cat, pointed teeth, and not enough clothes. She dismounted her whatever-it-was--it wasn't a horse, for it had taloned paws instead of hooves, and multifaceted insectile eyes--walked over to me, and cupped my face in her hands.
"His mother's eyes and smile," she said. "Welcome, Harry, son of Margaret. Would you like to bide here a bit?"
"Uh-uh," I said, backing away. I hadn't enjoyed anything that had happened since I'd decided to free a horse that wasn't a horse, and I had a deep suspicion that I'd enjoy whatever this inhumanly beautiful woman had in mind even less. "I don't even know who you are."
"Men call me the Leanansidhe, child," she said gently. "And I am your godmother. Your mother arranged it before your birth."
"The-" I couldn't even pronounce it. "I'll just call you Lea, okay? And you can't be my fairy godmother. That's a girl thing."
Lea ignored that. "Perhaps food to warm you," she suggested. "Or a hot drink."
I shook my head. "No way. Dad would kill me if I accepted anything from a stranger. And I gotta go home."
That started a slight argument. Make that a huge argument.
Lea and her friends tried every bribe imaginable-exploration, discoveries, vast knowledge of magic, unmitigated wealth. They appealed to my pride and my vanity. The attempt that hurt the worst was the guilt trip to persuade me that my remaining in Winter-at least for a while--was what my mother had wanted, Me, I was stubborn. I insisted on going back; Dad would be worried. Also niggling at the back of my mind was the realization that none of them had asked why I was injured, or even why I was in Winter in the first place.
Finally, they grew tired of dealing with me and my stubbornness. "Here," said the leader, who had said he was called Edric. "If you will not be persuaded--and it seems," he added, glaring at Lea, "that you will not be-then do as you did before, and say this."
And then the next thing I knew, I was back in New York, standing in the ruins of a carriage with no horse in sight, with blood on my arm, snow melting on my shirt and frost still in my hair.
***
Mercifully, one of the cops from the roadblock knew a scared kid when he saw one and brought me back to the hotel. When I saw my dad...well, there was a considerable amount of clinging. Not just on my side, either.
I think that the cops would have dropped it right there if not for the driver. Not wanting to look negligent (how do you tell your employer that you lost a carriage, after all?), he pressed charges. Having no alibi whatsoever-at least none that wouldn't get me sent to a shrink for the next thirty years or so-and being an absolutely terrible liar, I pleaded guilty in juvenile court. I got a probation and a stern talking to from the judge, Dad got to pay a hefty fine which I knew even then that he couldn't afford, and the press got to enjoy themselves by reporting on what they referred to as The Stolen Carriage Mystery. The reporters all decided that a boy who had stolen a carriage instead of a car had to be Amish, even though that's not even remotely accurate. Unless you count Wizard Amish.
Oh, and C.S. Lewis got banned from the house permanently. Dad saw no reason to let me read about talking animals after that. He said it just encouraged false expectations.
I couldn't really blame him. Narnia was nothing like this.
In addition creating to a new rule ("No conversations with talking animals!"), Dad made me promise not to go into the Nevernever again until I was a lot older.
"It's dangerous, Harry," he said, giving a hug as he put me to bed that night. "I know you meant well, but you don't live in a storybook. You coulda been killed. Or worse."
"I'm sorry..."
"Sssh. Sssh. I know, Harry. I know. But there are some mean bastards out there. And some of them are human, and some aren't. And they'll hurt you if they can." He touched my bandaged arm lightly. "And right now, you need to be safe. Understand?"
I looked up at him uncertainly. "I think I could fight 'em. Like I did the horse-thing."
He smiled sadly. "Yeah, you'd fight 'em right this minute, even though it'd cause trouble. But you're not a soldier. You're a kid. My kid. You need to take the time to be a kid, and think about normal stuff."
"Like escaping from handcuffs and gigs on cruise ships?"
"Exactly!"
I forced myself to ask the next question. "What would you have done if I'd gotten stuck there?"
He looked as if he was surprised I was even asking, then sat down on my bed. "I'd come after you, Harry."
"But..." I didn't exactly know how to put this. "You can't do the kind of things I do."
"Doesn't matter. There are other wizards in the world. I'd find one of them. And I'd learn where you were, and how to get there and how to get back. And then I'd come after you, and bring you home." He kissed me on the forehead. "No matter how much trouble you're in, Harry, I will always be there for you."
"Thanks, Dad."
He tried to give me a stern look and utterly failed. "So no more trips to other dimensions, okay? At least till you're old enough to handle it?"
I nodded. "I promise."
And I kept that promise-until a couple of years later, when I needed to talk to Dad desperately and was willing to travel into the Nevernever's World of Ghosts to do it.
But that's another story.
Fandom: The Dresden Files (bookverse and TV-verse)
Characters: Harry Dresden, the Leanansidhe, Malcolm Dresden, Original Monster Character
Prompt: #03 -- Prank
Word Count: 2773
Rating: G
Summary: Joe Murphy: [Harry Dresden] got busted for joyriding in a stolen carriage...Which also makes him a horse thief. -- Second City.
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files most emphatically do NOT belong to me. The series belongs to Jim Butcher, ROC Books, the SciFi Channel and Lionsgate Entertainment. No profit is being made, nor is any copyright or trademark infringement intended.
Table: Conjure at Your Own Risk
***
I never meant to steal the horse. The carriage shouldn't count, because the horse was drawing the carriage at the time and I didn't know how to detach one from the other. Okay, I know not much was left of the carriage, but that was just collateral damage. But the horse...well, that was an accident.
Sort of.
Happened one summer in New York City, when I was about ten. Dad was working in a three-star hotel near Central Park then-one of his better venues. I was trying to find ways to help, which wasn't working very well. Dad was pretty adamant about my not using my magic in public. Or about my doing magic in public on purpose, because I kept doing magic by accident.
I was sitting out in front of the hotel one morning, not really doing much of anything, just looking at cars and trucks passing. I loved cars at that age. I loved speed. And cars-as well as other forms of machinery--were already starting to not love me.
So I was watching cars driving by, some speeding by, and I was wishing I could go that fast.
And a man drove up to the front of the hotel and parked a shiny carriage right in front of the door. And the carriage had a huge and beautiful black horse. I could just imagine myself riding it, galloping over the countryside. Never mind that there's no countryside in New York City.
The driver dismounted, hurried past me and sort of staggered into the hotel bar.
And a few minutes later, the horse started muttering to itself. Actually talking.
I didn't know about pookas.
So, being ten, I walked over to the horse. "WHAT did you just say?"
I wasn't expecting trouble. I blame fantasy literature for this. I really do.
Like I said, I didn't know about pookas. So I didn't know that he could smell magic on me, or that he knew I was a wizard. I didn't know that, in addition to being Sidhe shapeshifters, they're tricksters, troublemakers and masters of the lie of omission, or that enough wizards have tried to trick pookas out of their power to make them resent and fear us.
As I reconstruct it now, the pooka must have seen this as a golden opportunity to get free of his present owner and kill a pesky wizard before said wizard came into his full power. Because the first thing it said after I spoke to it was, "You...you can hear me? Then save me from a life of miserable slavery! Unhitch me. Free me from bridle and bit, and ride me to my homeland where you shall be honored for your valor."
Oh, it laid it on with a trowel. But, like I said, ten. I bought it. In spades.
What I couldn't do was unhitch the carriage. I had no idea how the harness and reins and bridle and bit all worked.
Finally, the pooka said, who was in a hurry to escape his driver, told me to untie the reins from a lamppost and get in the driver's seat.
That was no problem. I could manage knots. Dad taught me. He started with tying shoes and moved on up to ropes. I'd even managed to get him to show me how to remove handcuffs. I wasn't a bad escape artist, for a kid.
"I don't think that I'm going to be able to pass as the driver, though," I said doubtfully, as I picked at the knotted reins. "Even if no one realizes that I'm a kid, I'm too short. And I don't have a uniform or anything."
"It will not take us long to reach our destination," the pooka said. "I need only run fast enough and we will both be where we need to be, I swear it."
"What about the driver, though?" I asked. "Isn't he going to worry about you? Won't he think that someone stole you?"
"Possibly," said the pooka coolly. "Truly, I do not care."
"I don't want to steal!"
"Is it stealing if the horse you are taking gives you permission to steal it?"
I knew there was something wrong with that argument, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. "I...guess not."
"And you'd be freeing a slave, remember. Is that considered shameful among your people?"
"What? No!" I gave the reins a decisive tug, and they came free in my hands.
"Then stop worrying," said the pooka, "and climb up in the driver's seat."
And I did.
The pooka must have wanted to put a lot of speed between it and its owner, because he fairly flew down the street--faster than the North Wind, I swear.
And me? I was loving it. Cheering, whooping, waving my arms and laughing my head off. I was probably the most conspicuous horse thief in the history of the world, and I didn't even think about it.
I can only speculate what happened next. My best guess is that someone saw the carriage careening down the road and me waving my arms and shouting like a madman, thought, "If that child falls, he's going to be killed, and if he doesn't stop, he'll run over someone," and called the cops.
Because the next thing, there was a roadblock right in front of us.
It was at that point that I realized that I didn't know how to hit the brakes and that we were going too fast NOT to smash into the cop cars ahead.
"Horse! Turn! Turn NOW!"
The pooka could have ignored me. After all, I'd die in the smash-up, and my destruction was at least part of what it wanted. If anything saved me, it was faerie self-interest. The idea of confronting police, with their steel handguns and steel bullets and steel cars, not to mention tranquilizer darts, all of which they were all set to use as weapons against the horse, because it was only a horse...well, I don't think that set too well with someone from Faerie.
So instead, the pooka told me what to do. Reach out with my power. Grab hold of reality. Whisper a certain word. And open a door.
I couldn't even remember telling the pooka that I had power, and I had no idea how to grab reality, but I didn't have time to think about either. So I just focused on doing what it said and opening the door to...wherever. In my case, it was more like ripping a hole, but what the hell, it worked.
I landed on all fours in a snowbank.
My first thought was, YES! It worked! The second, following closely on the heels of the first, was, ...and Dad is gonna ground me for life.
I struggled to get to my feet, brushed off as much of the snow as I could, and rubbed my arms. It was bitterly, bone-chillingly cold, and I was dressed for July. I looked around, but there were no houses, barns or shed nearby for me to shelter in. I was calf-deep in snow somewhere in the middle of a pine wood. There was nothing else. No wind, no squirrels chattering or birds chirping-only black, ice-laden trees, a sky of the oppressive grey that you get just before a snowstorm, and shadowed snowbanks as far as the eye could see.
Even more worrying, the hole that I'd torn in reality was gone.
It occurred to me, rather belatedly, that my father grounding me might be the least of my problems.
"Horse?" I said, my voice sounding thin and jarring in the relentless silence of the wood. "Horse, you gotta tell me how to get out of here. I'll freeze to death in this cold."
Nothing. Not a word.
I glanced around, but didn't see a sign of a horse-or even a hoofprint.
"You will die here,wizard," said a voice like winter wind, "but not of the cold."
I spun around-and slipped on the snow underfoot.
The pooka was standing up. He was in humanoid form, and nearly naked, but even if he hadn't been shrugging free of his harness, I'd have known right away that he was no human shapeshifter. His eyes told me that much. They were empty. Like holes in a mask. I would have bolted if I could have stood up long enough.
Then he came at me with a knife. To this day I can see it-a hilt of stone, and a crystalline blade was made of unmelting ice. I think he just magicked it up.
It's never a good idea to panic a wizard, and right then I was sick with fear. I lashed out with everything--fists, feet, teeth...and magic. I couldn't get the earth of the Nevernever to obey me, but I had no trouble conjuring fireballs. Of course, I'd never used them as weapons before, and my aim was lousy, but...you use what you've got.
The pooka's charcoal grey skin swelled and blistered as a stray fireball struck him. I stopped, astonished and horrified. I'd never burned anyone before. He stared at me, and when he spoke, there was both fear and hate in its voice.
"Fire in winter. And from one so young." He shivered. "Opening a door is one thing-it's a talent of children--but a deliberate magical attack..."
He ran, speeding across the snow like the shadow of a cloud. I never found out what happened to him.
I looked around, hoping that the pooka wouldn't return and wishing that I dared to explore. But I didn't like the idea of wandering off and not finding out where the door to the wardrobe was. For one thing, I'd already gotten a few nasty cuts from the pooka's knife. Besides, there might be other things out there. Things less friendly than the pooka. Things like the horrors that used my closet as a nightly portal from the Nevernever.
It was probably just as well that I didn't know that casting spells in Faerie was tantamount to marking a map with I'M HERE in big red letters.
Consequently, I was still trying to figure out where I was and how to get back when a hunting party, attracted by my magic, rode into the area where I was. One of the party--not the leader--was a woman with long red hair, the eyes of a cat, pointed teeth, and not enough clothes. She dismounted her whatever-it-was--it wasn't a horse, for it had taloned paws instead of hooves, and multifaceted insectile eyes--walked over to me, and cupped my face in her hands.
"His mother's eyes and smile," she said. "Welcome, Harry, son of Margaret. Would you like to bide here a bit?"
"Uh-uh," I said, backing away. I hadn't enjoyed anything that had happened since I'd decided to free a horse that wasn't a horse, and I had a deep suspicion that I'd enjoy whatever this inhumanly beautiful woman had in mind even less. "I don't even know who you are."
"Men call me the Leanansidhe, child," she said gently. "And I am your godmother. Your mother arranged it before your birth."
"The-" I couldn't even pronounce it. "I'll just call you Lea, okay? And you can't be my fairy godmother. That's a girl thing."
Lea ignored that. "Perhaps food to warm you," she suggested. "Or a hot drink."
I shook my head. "No way. Dad would kill me if I accepted anything from a stranger. And I gotta go home."
That started a slight argument. Make that a huge argument.
Lea and her friends tried every bribe imaginable-exploration, discoveries, vast knowledge of magic, unmitigated wealth. They appealed to my pride and my vanity. The attempt that hurt the worst was the guilt trip to persuade me that my remaining in Winter-at least for a while--was what my mother had wanted, Me, I was stubborn. I insisted on going back; Dad would be worried. Also niggling at the back of my mind was the realization that none of them had asked why I was injured, or even why I was in Winter in the first place.
Finally, they grew tired of dealing with me and my stubbornness. "Here," said the leader, who had said he was called Edric. "If you will not be persuaded--and it seems," he added, glaring at Lea, "that you will not be-then do as you did before, and say this."
And then the next thing I knew, I was back in New York, standing in the ruins of a carriage with no horse in sight, with blood on my arm, snow melting on my shirt and frost still in my hair.
***
Mercifully, one of the cops from the roadblock knew a scared kid when he saw one and brought me back to the hotel. When I saw my dad...well, there was a considerable amount of clinging. Not just on my side, either.
I think that the cops would have dropped it right there if not for the driver. Not wanting to look negligent (how do you tell your employer that you lost a carriage, after all?), he pressed charges. Having no alibi whatsoever-at least none that wouldn't get me sent to a shrink for the next thirty years or so-and being an absolutely terrible liar, I pleaded guilty in juvenile court. I got a probation and a stern talking to from the judge, Dad got to pay a hefty fine which I knew even then that he couldn't afford, and the press got to enjoy themselves by reporting on what they referred to as The Stolen Carriage Mystery. The reporters all decided that a boy who had stolen a carriage instead of a car had to be Amish, even though that's not even remotely accurate. Unless you count Wizard Amish.
Oh, and C.S. Lewis got banned from the house permanently. Dad saw no reason to let me read about talking animals after that. He said it just encouraged false expectations.
I couldn't really blame him. Narnia was nothing like this.
In addition creating to a new rule ("No conversations with talking animals!"), Dad made me promise not to go into the Nevernever again until I was a lot older.
"It's dangerous, Harry," he said, giving a hug as he put me to bed that night. "I know you meant well, but you don't live in a storybook. You coulda been killed. Or worse."
"I'm sorry..."
"Sssh. Sssh. I know, Harry. I know. But there are some mean bastards out there. And some of them are human, and some aren't. And they'll hurt you if they can." He touched my bandaged arm lightly. "And right now, you need to be safe. Understand?"
I looked up at him uncertainly. "I think I could fight 'em. Like I did the horse-thing."
He smiled sadly. "Yeah, you'd fight 'em right this minute, even though it'd cause trouble. But you're not a soldier. You're a kid. My kid. You need to take the time to be a kid, and think about normal stuff."
"Like escaping from handcuffs and gigs on cruise ships?"
"Exactly!"
I forced myself to ask the next question. "What would you have done if I'd gotten stuck there?"
He looked as if he was surprised I was even asking, then sat down on my bed. "I'd come after you, Harry."
"But..." I didn't exactly know how to put this. "You can't do the kind of things I do."
"Doesn't matter. There are other wizards in the world. I'd find one of them. And I'd learn where you were, and how to get there and how to get back. And then I'd come after you, and bring you home." He kissed me on the forehead. "No matter how much trouble you're in, Harry, I will always be there for you."
"Thanks, Dad."
He tried to give me a stern look and utterly failed. "So no more trips to other dimensions, okay? At least till you're old enough to handle it?"
I nodded. "I promise."
And I kept that promise-until a couple of years later, when I needed to talk to Dad desperately and was willing to travel into the Nevernever's World of Ghosts to do it.
But that's another story.