Touched by an Angel (Harry/Castiel)
Title: Touched by an Angel (XIII)
Author: nilitara
Fandom: HP, SPN
Rating: PG
Charaters: Harry, Castiel
Summary: Castiel comforts Harry from a nightmare, doing something forbidden.
For: crossovers100
Prompt: 038. Touch.
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of their respective creator. I own nothing.
Touched by an Angel - Main entry
038. Touch.
Castiel had always watched Harry diligently, having grew to love the boy in his charge, but he had been paying way much more attention to him since the night he had come back to Privet Drive, after the disaster that had taken place at the end of the Tournament. He knew Harry, deep inside, he knew him like no one else did and no one else ever would, not even his friends or Harry himself. Therefore, he knew the boy would feel too much pain, too much sorrow, too much guilt over his friend’s ultimate demise to keep himself from drowning in it.
Harry was someone who felt so much love for the people around him, no matter what his relatives had taught him, that it was a joy to know him, to be the recipient of these feelings, but Castiel knew that feeling so deeply had a downside, one that other people, who were less caring, couldn’t imagine. Castiel knew Harry would be experimenting it soon enough. The last few days at Hogwarts had been difficult to live, but he had never been really alone there, his friends always around, making sure he knew it wasn’t his fault, watching over him in a way different, yet similar, to Castiel’s, with Harry’s awareness of them on another level.
Castiel hadn’t been needed on an essential level back then. Harry hadn’t had to activate the pendant so that Castiel could come to him, so the angel had stayed in the background, waiting for the young wizard to feel a pain too difficult to handle on his own, without his help. He hated knowing it would come, hated to have to see Harry hurting so strongly, but he knew there would be no escaping it.
The night Harry had arrived to Privet Drive, though, was the night the nightmares started to show with a vengeance. They were violent, very violent, often a replay, blow by blow, of the scene Castiel had assisted to where he had watched Harry fight against his enemy. It had taken all of his will power not to intervene but he had known he had no choice, he wasn’t authorized to. He had kept himself from acting and still had seen Harry come back in one piece, damaged only on a psychological level but not dead and that was the most important to him because death was the one thing he could not heal.
He would never have thought that it would be more difficult to watch over Harry as he was safe back into his home, where Voldemort couldn’t dream of targeting him but yet, it was. Seeing the child in distress every night, waking up either screaming or crying, Cedric’s name always on his lips, was one of the hardest thing Castiel had to live through and he had lived through a lot.
Every whimper was a knife to his heart, every sniffle had him stifle his own cry, it was all he could do to prevent himself from crossing the line, from acting and taking away the pain. Yet he couldn’t. sometimes, he would appear to Harry in the middle of the night, while the Dursley were sleeping peacefully - they who did not deserve it - when Harry was awake and wondering what was going to happen to him now.
Their discussion had evolved. They weren’t on the same level than the ones they used to have when Harry was a mere child. Now that the last piece of his innocence had been stolen away by life itself in a cemetery - an irony that Castiel shouldn’t judge - he had other questions for his guardian angel, other subjects he wanted to explore, other needs that should be met. He wasn’t the same boy who had last been in this room.
However, Castiel’s interventions couldn’t go any further; they shouldn’t even exist as it was. Yet, with every nightmare, the temptation was growing stronger. He had difficulty to stand it, it was hurting him, almost as badly as it was hurting his charge and he couldn’t understand that kind of pain. Never before had he felt so much, so deeply for one of his protégé. But Harry, as had Uriel said all these years ago even if he hadn’t meant it like that, was special.
Sometimes, Castiel would wake Harry himself, when he saw the nightmares too deep for the boy to tear himself away on his own. There were times when he would just sit down on the bed, or the desk, and just listen to Harry telling him all about it, all he saw, the scenarios his mind had come up with to torture him some more.
Tonight was different thought. Tonight, he had seen the nightmares appearing to be more violent than usual, appearing to be hurting Harry more strongly and he could feel in the boy the longing to wake up from it, yet he was trapped and even Castiel trying to wake him up, the same way he usually did, was of no help. And when the trashing became fiercer, Castiel felt his heart cave in.
He knew he shouldn’t do what he was about to, knew that that kind of contact was strictly forbidden. Yet, he couldn’t seem to care and he still acted. Because, for Harry, he had already defied orders more than once, even His, like Uriel had told him.
Slowly, he leaned down, mere millimeters away from Harry’s sleeping face and, chastely, brushed his lips against the boy’s. The effect was instantaneous. Harry’s body stilled, all the tension that was radiating from him only instants before vanished and a peaceful smile graced his lips as he sighed softly. It was the reaction Castiel was expecting because he knew exactly what a human kissed by an angel would see: Heaven.
However, humans still on Earth, who had not yet been taken by Death, weren’t supposed to know what Heaven looked like. And this was the reason such a contact, no matter how insignificant he seemed, was forbidden for an angel.
Almost as soon as Castiel drew back, he fell the insistent pull from his Lord and knew that his transgression had been noticed and judged. He had crossed a line and was going to be punished, he could feel it in the calling from his Lord, in every single particle of his being and yet, looking at Harry’s peaceful feature, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
At least, he had granted his charge a night of dreams instead of nightmares and, maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to get him through the summer. At least, he could hope.