Chapter Text
In the heat of summer, people sometimes forget themselves.
This is not an uncommon phenomenon, as demonstrated by a surprising amount of bookstore patrons. Aziraphale had been in the book-selling business long enough to know that people get far too excited when sunny weather and gold-gilded pages enter the mix. They’ll squabble and fight over textbooks, tearing at ancient, extensively-bound spines, shouting at each other, and sometimes even at Aziraphale as well. This and an instance of someone trying to light the store on fire about fifty years ago had led to him changing his opening times for the summer holidays. These egregious crimes against nature (and books) are only one of the reasons why, now, he has closed the store entirely. The reasons for this new change are listed for viewing convenience below.
- Magic lessons.
As promised, Aziraphale and Crowley welcome Rubeus Hagrid into their home every week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. What he does there is a matter of great contention between the people who observe him lumbering within the building. In reality, he’d gotten a new wand only two weeks after he’d been cleared of all charges for the murder of Myrtle Elizabeth Warren. Fudge had begrudgingly been coerced into purchasing a new one, as if the small sum was such a huge amount of money for the minister of magic to spend. At 16 inches long, with unicorn hair and hazel, Rubeus has yet to stop fawning over it. And, really, who could blame him? His enthusiasm for learning wandlore and spellwork was enough to make up for the occasional explosion.
Aziraphale doesn’t mind -- as long as none of it harms his books.
- Job searching.
Dobby the Free Elf may have been satisfied with his freedom from Malfoy manor at first, but it seemed to have gotten old to just wander around side streets and act as an occasional vigilante if the way that he moped around was any indication. So, by the beginning of summer, Harry had taken to sifting through old editions of the Quibbler and the Daily Prophet, searching with Dobby for jobs he might take on. They considered Gringotts -- too stuffy and formal -- the Daily Prophet -- A veritable propaganda machine -- the Leaky Cauldron -- too much like serving with the Malfoys -- and several security jobs.
For now, he’s taken to doing temp work with the Hogwarts summer staff.
- Babysitting.
Crowley and Aziraphale, while well versed in child care (no matter how mediocre they might be at it) find themselves increasingly busier with their godchildren and their 60,000 friends.
All of them -- even Death (Azrael, who visits on Fridays and pretends not to notice that Crowley does happen to be their long-thought-dead brother) is a bit of a handful -- take more than a bit of elbow grease to wrangle into not causing daily explosions and committing crimes that might genuinely end them up in jail.
“Azira phale! You can’t just… Do that!”
Some days, of course, the mischief originates from them , rather than the children around them. Harry blanches as he watches his Angelic godparent snap his fingers, a man halfways across the road dropping his coffee all over the front of his shirt.
“He was about to throw it in that woman’s face!” Hisses the Angel, looking a bit desperate to find an excuse for the abrupt act of Angelic wrath. “Oh- it was a last-minute decision, dear!”
Crowley, on the other hand, takes one look at the man’s horrified, pale face, and bursts into giggles. He ignores the confused glances the pedestrians around him shoot his way and laughs enough that he starts to choke. Neville, even after a week of staying with their group, still seems embarrassed by Harry’s godparent’s antics.
Neville had been picked up -- by Aziraphale and Harry, as Crowley had threatened to eat his grandmother -- at 9 pm sharp on a Wednesday, and had been well accommodated since then. Harry, who had once been confined to sleeping in a cupboard, was more than overjoyed to have someone vacationing at his house. He was also entirely unsubtle in trying to coerce Neville into living with them permanently. It hadn’t worked, of course, but that hadn’t seemed to stop him from trying.
Aziraphale huffs, blushing. “Oh- stop laughing, Crowley! It really isn’t that funny.”
“You’re-” the Demon lets out an ungainly snort and tips his head back, devolving into another round of laughter, hands on his hips and grown-out hair shaking behind him. It flashes in the light, now hanging somewhere around his waist when not tied up in a bun. “You’re right, Angel, it isn’t funny- it’s- it’s bloody hilariousss. Who knew you had it in you?”
“You did!” Aziraphale gapes at him, his eyebrows drawing together in a confused, pitiful sort of expression. “You did, you- you-”
“Wiley serpent?” Suggests Harry, with a grin comparable to his father’s. This breaks Crowley entirely -- he leans over, heaving out great, shuddering laughs. It’s a bit disturbing - what with how far open his jaw stretches and how wide his eyes can go. Harry seems to be holding back laughter as well.
The Angel gives up on his defense, rolling his eyes. He continues down the street and tries very hard not to smile.
“Ooo!” Harry points to a cafe across the street and nudges Neville meaningfully. “Since you spilled that guy’s coffee, we should go get some.”
“Uh-“ Neville startles out of his confusion. “Oh!” Then he nods, giving the two incredibly powerful and ancient beings supervising the two thirteen-year-old children doe eyes in an effort to convince them.
It works. Aziraphale smiles -- he knows the ploy, Warlock used to be quite good at the same sort of convincing-face -- but God bless them, it’s too effective.
“You’re only thirteen,” mutters Crowley, voice a bit of a wheeze after so much laughter, his hair in disarray. “Only thirteen, and you can make an Angel do anything. Anything at all. I spent centuries trying to convince you to be my coworker, A’zira.”
Fifteen minutes, a bit of begging, three pastries, one mug of black coffee, and an egregious tip later, they’ve left the store. It’s all oddly domestic. Crowley orders the food with a detached, bored look, and drops 3x the price of it all in the tip jar. Aziraphale watches fondly, only surprised out of his musings when harry starts to laugh at him. Neville watches the three of them like he’s intruding -- until Harry tosses an arm around his shoulders and tugs him inward, whispering conspiratorially about weaseling another hot chocolate out of his godfathers. The walk back to the bookshop is much of the same. Harry nestles himself directly between his godparents and his friend, all of them wandering around and getting sidetracked by looking at pretty dogs or nice storefronts.
“I don’t get hot chocolate.”
Aziraphale throws Crowley a warning look, just as Neville lets out an affronted noise. Hot chocolate, as evidenced by the brown smeared across his upper lips, had been proven as his favorite drink.
“What do you mean you don’t get it?” He asks, a little sour. “It’s just melted chocolate, milk, and sugar. What’s not there to get?”
Crowley waves his hands about and grapples for an explanation, mouth open as if he hadn’t expected anyone to ask him why. “I- I mean- ‘s just chocolate!”
“Just- chocolate, dear? Just chocolate?”
Realizing his mistake, the Demon straightens out, glaring at Neville as he snickers. “It’s just melted chocolate. Why not- why- well, why not just eat it normally?”
“It’s the principle of it, professor,” Neville answers dutifully. “It’s got extra sugar. It’s melted. It’s a drink. I’ve never seen you eat -- did you know there’s a rumor you’re a vampire among the Ravenclaws? They do a lot of theorizing. But- uh, anyways. I’ve never seen you eat, but you do drink. Wouldn’t you like hot chocolate more than normal chocolate?”
“Wh- A vampire?” Crowley laughs, crossing his arms and challenging the idea, all mentions of hot chocolate forgotten.
“Yeah!” Harry replies enthusiastically. “I’ve got six galleons betting on you being a secret werewolf. Hermione put three down on Aziraphale being the werewolf. Said he was oddly nice.”
“Oh… Is that a… bad thing?”
Harry takes one look at Aziraphale’s downtrodden demeanor and bursts into laughter. “No! She just said you ought to have some sort of hard spot.”
“I haven’t bet at all,” Neville says. “It feels mean… Especially since we got to see you had… Wings?”
“Wings? What wings?” Crowley glares. “I haven’t got any wings. In fact, me an’ Zira ‘r half muggle. Perfectly normal, here.”
“I wasn’t asking anything,” Neville hurries to explain, waving a hand, currently unoccupied by his half-empty mug of hot chocolate. “I don’t need to know! I was just curious, that’s all!”
Crowley, snorting, pats the back of the boy’s head. “I’m jussst messing with you. Just finish your weird… melty chocolate, ok?”
There’s a sudden change in the atmosphere. It whips through the air like an odd scent of sewage, feeling...
Sudden.
Not that anyone but Crowley can really sense it. Aziraphale seems to have some inkling -- a draining of sunlight, a drop of the love in the air, a quieting of happiness. But, Crowley, as a Demon, can sniff out the exact opposite. For some reason, the closer they get to the bookshop, the more darkness hangs in the air. It’s tangible. Not quite anger, or hatred, or cruelty, and not quite demonic enough to present itself as a threat. Instead, it feels like resentment and the stink of fear. It’s the slick taste of sweat and the cherry-red bursting of irritation.
This change, of all inconveniences and for some hell forsaken reason, has to be noticed, a moment later, by Harry.
“It smells odd,” he says, wrinkling his nose in disgust. His glasses slide down at the movement -- he regards them with annoyance, before shoving them back up with a thumb. “Like… I dunno…”
“Like rudeness,” Crowley mutters to himself. Harry, hearing the private admittance, snaps his fingers, nodding.
“Yeah! Yeah, like, it isn’t even a smell. It just feels odd?”
“You are becoming… scarily in tune with that.” Neville’s small look of awe is not missed by anyone. “What is it, do you think? Something dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than a scorned customer, I’m sure,” reassures Aziraphale gently. The look he shares with Crowley -- cautious, at the least -- denotes more worry than his voice. “Not much happens around here, dear.”
“The apocalypse happened around here. That's something.”
“The apocalypse happened in Tadfield,” corrects Crowley distractedly, eyes narrowing at the quickly approaching bookshop. “We stopped it in Tadfield.”
Neville smiles nervously. “Er- the apocalypse was everywhere, Professor Crowley.”
“Ngk-” The Demon spins around and rips his glasses away, yellowed eyes narrowed into a sneering look. “I told you I’m not a bloody professor! Too incompetent for that, ‘m not sure why they hired either of us with our work record anyways.”
“Dumbledore probably thought you’d stir up chaos,” suggests Harry. He’s halfway through a laugh when his face goes screwed up with discomfort. “Oh- that feeling is even worse now.”
“You’re sure that pastry didn’t just disagree with you, dear?”
“Well, I didn’t have one, Aziraphale, and you and Neville are just fine, aren’t you?” Crowley bites his lip, then grimaces, abandoning the group entirely and stalking forward on lanky, broken-looking steps.
The bookstore itself looks completely normal. The moonlight of the evening still filters in through its windows, reflecting about and casting sharp contrasts against the sidewalk outside. The dustily burnished red of the sign outside has the same ancient, withered quality as it has since a few months after Aziraphale bought the place. The only noticeable difference, in fact, is the small group of people gathered at their front door and banging, quite aggressively, at the entrance.
“Hey!” Shouts Crowley, the first to see them, snapping his fingers angrily to get their attention, one hand on his hips and the other busy admonishing them.
The woman at the front -- a pudgy, bloated looking person, with watery blue eyes and flat, brown hair, stringing down her face like a wilted salad -- turns to him on what appears to be her sixteenth knock. She’s dressed in a pale brown skirt and button-up, a well-worn suit jacket tossed over her shoulders. She has the look of someone angry on another person’s behalf. Those persons happen to be standing right behind her, too, conveniently nearby, shuddering, flinching away when the rest of the group catches up with the Demon.
For a moment, Crowley’s transported into that promise he made two years ago. He sees fighting, and protection, and a battered, malnourished kid, so eager to please the first two allies he’d had in a very long time. His vision goes red as he moves to meet the eyes of the Dursleys.
“You,” Crowley hisses, thanking his past self for deciding to leave his sunglasses off. His long legs carry him closer, shoes tapping against the concrete in an angry staccato rhythm. The group -- save for the woman in the front -- jerks away from him frightfully. “You dare come back here, you presumptuous little freaks-”
“I dare say,” chortles the woman, shielding the rest of what can be assumed to be her family behind her. They look, quite hilariously, terrified. They’re wearing shorts and skirts and soft little T-shirts that might’ve looked quaint if the group of people that were wearing them weren’t the worst sort of people, and they’re all utterly drenched in fear-sweat.
“You have a lot of nerve calling me a freak like that!” She scans Crowley’s form -- with his fully black attire, leather pants and all, and the red tie slung about his neck -- and laughs again, body trembling, gelatinous. “You’re that sneaky little nitwit, aren’t you! Vernon, you couldn’t deal with him yourself?”
Regrettably, Crowley doesn’t catch the moment Aziraphale and the others catch up. In hindsight -- if he could’ve -- he would’ve sent them away. He would’ve dealt with the situation himself. The harsh, startled breath that’s torn from Harry is the first notice of their arrival, as the woman before them turns to look at the Dursley’s. When Crowley looks back at his own group, he sees a mixture of emotions. Neville’s confusion, Aziraphale’s shock, and worst of all, Harry’s fear.
Fear, that is apparently written over by anger.
Harry takes a step forward before Aziraphale can move to shield him. He grimaces, face tense, but eyes as determined as ever. The other group looks at him with disdain, as he squints through his glasses, looking at the beige woman before him.
“M- Marge?”
“Ah!” She whips back around to face him, lips pursed in dissatisfaction.“It’s you-” She glances at the Dursleys, awaiting confirmation “-that’s him, isn’t it? Dudleykins? The ungrateful little creep?”
There’s no response from the older boy. He seems, wisely, to have learned to keep his mouth shut. Even past being petrified with fear, the look Aziraphale sends him is enough for the boy to know that answering would not guarantee any safety at all. His feet shuffle further backward, away from his family, back leaning up against the wall of the bookshop behind him.
“Anyways,” drawls Marge. “I’m here to come and collect my family’s goods. That boy was rightfully placed with my brother, and you are to return him.” She takes a step forward. Harry falters back. Aziraphale moves to steady him, but he seems determined to argue without support. Looking back at the other Dursleys, though, it seems they’d rather leave than have the boy back.
“That boy…” Harry’s hands twitch to his pockets, where the top end of his wand can be seen standing. “- Can speak for himself.” Marge’s towering stature contrasts his height greatly, and it’s clear that she takes offense with his refusal to comply. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“And- and what do you call them, then?” Petunia bursts suddenly, standing in the background, her neck craning and voice high pitched with a mixture of fear and absolute hatred. She gestures toward Aziraphale, Crowley, and Neville distastefully. “These- these creeps! At least we can be called blood, Potter!”
“Oh- feeling nostalgic?” Aziraphale sneers, voice thin as ice. “Harry is not your sister , Petunia.”
This has her flinching, now. She shrinks back into the meaty grip of her husband, biting her lip, jaw twitching in a way that practically illustrates the resentment of her past. It’s a satisfying expression coming from her, and it seems to give Harry some ounce of extra confidence.
And Aziraphale knows how Lily and Petunia existed. He understands the jealousy, the anger, the sadness. The betrayal of being inferior. That doesn’t mean he in any way has pity for the woman. The world, as demonstrated by himself and by so many others, is created with choices. Petunia’s choice to be spiteful, and cruel, and unkind to anyone but those she favors, defines the type of person she chooses to be.
“Don’t speak to her like that, you oaf,” snorts Marge, just as her brother lets out a garbled shriek of indignance at his wife’s treatment.
“Don’t call him an oaf,” Crowley sneers right back. “And anyway,” he continues, looking quite pleased with himself, “If anyone isss an oaf, it’s your great beefy cow of a brother.”
Scoffing, Marge waves a hand flippantly in their group’s direction, starting to look like a bird’s broken wing as she swings herself round. “You’ve got a lot of nerve! Looking like a skinny little twig yourself -- I bet I could snap you in half!”
Aziraphale, now, is the one angry on his partner’s behalf. He steps forward, glaring heavily. “Don’t even try it-”
“Excuse me?”
The voice comes from below. Everyone looks at it with expressions of mild surprise, as the origin -- the small, nervous-looking boy of thirteen, named Neville Longbottom -- has yet to address any of them at all. He’d been too focused on staying steady with Harry, pressing a grounding hand to his shoulder. Harry looks like he’s focusing on trying not to vomit, wand-hand shaking, his entire body trembling in a mixture of poignant rage and old, instinctive fear.
“But erm…” Neville, suddenly flustered at the attention, blushes. “Who are you people?”
This prompts several answers from either side of the group. Some come with quite a bit more curses than the others. Still, there are only ears for Harry’s answer on either side. It isn’t likely that the Dursley’s feel anything other than a sense of ownership toward the boy, but they stake their claim, in the way that they lean in eagerly, awaiting an answer, a pledge of allegiance, something of blood and thicker. Something in the air smelling of ozone whips about, and a streetlight across from them winks out, shrouding the silent area in heavy, oppressive darkness.
“They’re no one,” he replies, leaning casually into the stormy wind that sweeps through the air as if it’s a simple matter of denouncement. “Nobody at all.”
The stench of brimstone grows stronger. It’s theatric, the way the air shifts, as if heat rising through a building’s current. The way that Harry’s hair rises, the unruly mess of black shifting under the weight of intense magic, his dark skin lit up with an eerie glow that seems to come from nowhere. Excess reserves of strength have never been uncommon from Harry. Not when he was kept by the Dursleys, and not now.
And, so, when Marge starts to let out tiny, whistling breaths, no one but she is surprised.
“Wh-”
She chokes on the word (along with her own throat.) At first, it looks as if she’s begun to swell with indignant anger, making herself larger, more imposing, threatening the thirteen-year-old boy below her. Her face goes red. Her eyes grow beadier. Then, as a button goes flying off of her blouse, it becomes clear that she is inflating more like a balloon. Her eyes bulge, her great, bulbous red face stretching like rubber. All at once, the fear on the Dursley’s faces warps, turning to horror so great you can practically smell it.
“Marge!” Screams Vernon and Petunia at once, their son, between them, starting to giggle in hysterical fear.
Neville and Harry back up in surprise -- glancing between themselves as if to ask was that you? -- as the woman starts to float, her legs snapping out of their stockings and the pale tan of her shoes cracking with the effort to contain her mass. Vernon grabs her leg just as Harry starts to laugh in incredulity, yanking at her as she screams garbled words between two flaps of skin that might’ve once been lips. The spell-caster in question seems to be having trouble with his morality, trying to decide whether he should find the whole experience repulsive, or hilarious, or both.
“You fix her!” Vernon roars desperately, glancing back to Crowley and Aziraphale while very quickly losing grip on his sister’s massive leg. “You make her right!”
It’s the first thing he’s said to them that night. His voice is even less effective than it was the one other time they’d spoken to him.
“Er-” Crowley shrugs. Without his glasses, he looks utterly amazed. “I- er- I don’t see anything wrong?”
“What- what do you-” Vernon cuts off, screaming as his grip fails, Marge’s garish voice letting out a sound that might’ve matched, had her vocal cords not been 3x too big. She starts to float up above, her family shouting, but no longer frantically scrabbling for her limbs. “Bring her back! You bring her back!”
The sunset glows against her as she drifts. The rooftops greet her back as she bounces against them, hitting flagpoles, shrieking higher and higher as she flies in the same direction as her pitch. Aziraphale and Crowley had warded off any passerbyes from seeing the fight from the moment it started, and they begin to revel in the view as she floats, blissfully uncaring of anyone who might be around to see it.
Then, after a moment of warring with an Angel’s moral compass and a Demon at his shoulder, Aziraphale snaps. “Fine!” he shouts, abrupt, annoyed enough with all the screaming that he concedes. He snaps, and for a split second, Marge free falls from the sky, her now-normal voice low and shrill at once, her family equally as distressed. Then, with a disgruntled sigh, he snaps again, and the entire group has disappeared in a poof of pink light.
“Where- Aziraphale!” Crowley beams, rounding on his partner with an expression more befitting of someone at a wedding than someone who had just watched their godchild inflate his former aunt. Then, planting a kiss on the Angel’s cheek, he asks: “You scoundrel! Where’d you toss’em?”
“I-”
Aziraphale pauses, looking around himself. His expression switches from elation to horror, throwing itself so quickly through the five stages of grief that God Herself gets whiplash from the Heavens. He turns, planting his hands firmly on Crowley’s shoulders. For a moment, the whole street holds its breath, Crowley’s wide, confused eyes piercing that of the Angel’s as they stand there.
“Crowley, where are the children?”
---
“Harry- Harry! Calm down- Hey! Harry!”
“What?”
Harry’s voice comes as a growl, as he whirls around to meet Neville head-on. His eyes are wild, his feet frantic in their dance against the pavement, wand held out and waving about to combat invisible enemies, people long ahead and far below. He looks, most of all, as if he’s uncertain of what it is he’s afraid of.
“What, Neville? What is it?”
“I-” the other boy flinches, eyes darting to the ground and back.
They’re stranded in the middle of a random muggle street. There’s nothing around but the beginnings of a suburb, all gently waving trees and a park not far away. The darkness has fully engulfed the sky now, not a speck of sunlight to be seen. There, in the summer heat, in the dead of night, Harry and Neville pant, hands on their knees and wands as they wait out exhaustion.
“Harry… Why are we running?”
“Because-” Harry cuts off, grappling for an answer. His anger at his inability to find one seems to grow by the minute until sparks start to trail from the tip of his wand, furious eyes stuck to the pavement. “Because I have to, Neville! I just- I just blew up my aunt!”
Neville hiccups in a cautious breath, hands settling at his side, placating in nature. “I thought you said she was no one?”
“Well- she is now! But- But I don’t think Crowley an’ Aziraphale are going to want me inflating her, nobody or not!”
“Harry, they love you! That can’t really be why you’re running. You know they love you.” Neville takes a step forward and sets a gentle hand to his friend’s arm, guiding his defensive stance back into a more relaxed one. They’re both halfway into an outright panic, sweating from the exertion of the run. When Harry doesn’t fight Neville’s touch, he pulls the boy to the curb and sits with him, putting an arm around his shoulders as he starts to shiver despite the warmth. “That was… your blood family, wasn’t it?”
Harry sucks in a sharp breath, then lets out an even harsher chuckle in return. “Yeah. Yeah- that was them.” He shakes his head, a hand diving through his hair as he tries to regain his sanity. “M sorry, Neville. It just freaks me out. Well- I mean. You saw. A picture of my brilliance.”
“Hey, don’t be sorry. My gran coming up to my room freaks me out all the time, it’s not weird.”
Harry fixes him with a scrutinizing look. “That isn’t as heartening as you think it is, Neville.”
“Yeah, well.” Another wry chuckle, and Neville looks up. The sky is a bright one, oddly unclouded for the sort of weather that usually occupies it. He lets out a soft hum, and then turns back to Harry. “You’re like… They love you. And… You got scared. And blew up your aunt. That isn’t the worst thing a wizard’s done when they’re mad.”
Letting out a little snort, Harry shrugs Neville’s arm off his back and turns, facing him, breath slowing as he calms down. He seems a bit embarrassed in himself now, but indulges in the conversation nonetheless. “Oh yeah? I bet you’d know.”
Their discussion is interrupted by a more palpable change in the atmosphere than ever before. There’s the same type of tensing of air as earlier — yet sharper, filled more with magic than malice, as clouds gather and the wind begins to shiver past them. Harry immediately reaches for his wand, discarded in his lap, eyes darting over toward the bush across from them, rustling in a strangely cold air.
“Come out,” Harry demands, in a sudden burst of confidence. If anything, his time with Crowley and Aziraphale has made him more confident by far. “Show yourself.”
The wind quickens. The leaves twist and swirl in a mesmerizing pattern, disrupted by a gap between hot and cold, just to the left of the bushes before them. The chill grows even wetter, the freeze settling in as an animalistic, low noise comes from only a few feet away.
Then, out from the leaves, appears a dog.
It’s incredibly unremarkable. Black and shaggy and dirty, covered in sand, dust, and what looks like blood. Its eyes are sunken and exhausted, its tongue lolling out lazily as it pants. It reveals makes the air tuck itself neatly back into it’s warm, dry self, the wind calming as Harry blinks, putting his wand away, frowning in confusion as the world starts to right itself.
“It’s just a… dog?” Neville walks forward, holding a hand out for the animal to sniff. It ignores him completely, its tail coming up in a bedraggled wave as it walks right over to Harry instead.
“It’s hurt,” murmurs the boy, noticing a smattering of blood running along a jagged cut on its side. He lets it nudge at his hand for a moment before he runs it over its shaggy black head distractedly. “Neville-”
“Yeah, now you wanna go back to your godparents.” Neville cracks a grin, before nodding, gesturing for Harry and the dog to follow his lead. “I’m rubbish with spells, otherwise I’d try to help!”
“You’re not rubbish with spells,” Harry corrects, though he’s more absorbed with coaxing the dog along than he is with admonishing his friend’s self-deprecating nature. It seems completely obedient already, trotting alongside him, limping, but determined to follow, as if Harry’s been his master for years, and not only a recent acquaintance. “It’s that wand you’ve got. You an’ Ron’ve got the same issue.”
Neville sighs in melancholy. “I know, but my gran would have my head if I tried to get a new wand. I’ll just be bad for now.”
“Stop that.” Harry feels around the dog’s neck for a leash, and, in finding none, nods. “Ok. So, I don’t think it belongs to anyone. Do you know anything about dogs?”
Neville, jumping up onto a concrete barrier and balancing there as he walks, shakes his head. “No, sorry. I’ve only got Trevor! Dogs are pretty uncommon at Hogwarts, so I’ve never bothered learning about them.”
“That’s alright. I reckon A’Zira’s gotta have a book about them somewhere.”
Neville frowns. “Say- Harry, do you even know where we’re going?”
Harry snorts. “Of course I do. Crowley made sure I was familiar with the area when they first let me move in. I know it like I know my wand.”
After fifteen more minutes -- and Harry almost retracting that statement as -- the bookshop looms into view. The street is empty now, devoid of anyone from Harry’s past and of pedestrians as well. The closer to the bookshop they get, though, the more a slick sense of dread in Harry’s gut arises. He looks at the dog, and his wand, and his hands, and wonders. He’s caused so much trouble, and now he’s asking to bring something else into his godparent’s life as well. They’d both already gone through so much. The idea of adding more to that pile -- whether by blowing up his aunt, or finding odd strays on streetsides, or running away from home -- is a worrying one.
He’s broken from his thoughts by the interruption of a shadow in the doorway of the building before them. The person, all thin angles and dramatic flair, slinks forward. What really draws him out is the bark of the dog. It snarls, hackles raised, as red hair and leather pants saunters vaguely into view, Crowley looking just as startled by it as the mutt is of him as he curls inward with surprise.
“Wh- Go shopping , did we?” He mutters, regarding the dog with distaste, before turning to Harry. He leans over -- bracing his hands against Harry’s shoulders -- and lets out a heavy sigh, filled with relief, worry, and a mixture of thousands of conflicting thoughts. His eyes are freed of their glasses, shining with obvious nerves. Then, dipping his head down to the ground, shoulders lurching upward, he says:
“What in the Nine Circles were you thinking, Harry!”
“I- I didn’t-”
“You scared us, Harry.” Noticing the boy’s look of fear, Crowley sighs, squeezing his shoulders once before standing to his full height. “You’re not in trouble. You just bloody ssscared us. That woman has been taken care of, anywaysss. A’Zira an’ I didn’t know where either of you went.”
Harry hangs his head, a blizzard of guilt whirling across his chest. Crowley, seemingly satisfied with the brief reprimand, shakes his head and regards the other human party of the group.
“And you. Longbottom. Are you alright?”
“I’m- I’m fine, really,” he stammers. Then, growing determined: “And Harry didn’t mean it! He was super worried-”
“Oh, bloody hell. I’m not blaming you. Not either of you. No one’s mad at you, Harry. I like mischief. Watching your stupid aunt blow off into the ssssky was a highlight of the night. That an’ watching Aziraphale spill that stupid bloody coffee on that asshole.” Crowley lets out another sigh -- a common noise that night, it seems -- and gestures to the dog. “I am a little confused at… erm. That.”
Harry, trying to find some grasp on his confidence, shrugs. “It’s a dog.”
Crowley glares at his godson. “You’re worse than Adam. Yes, I can see that Harry. What’sss his story?”
“It got all… creepy? Around?” Harry snorts at his own explanation. “And then it just… came out of the bushes.”
“It came out of the bushes,” deadpans Crowley, dry and unamused. “Just… got some wind blowing, and then it- what, ran at you?”
“It was actually rather polite,” Neville quips, smiling. “It just… came up and sniffed Harry’s hand. It wouldn’t sniff mine, though.”
Suddenly, the door to the bookshop goes flying open, a burst of white hair and tartan dashing out and looping his arms around Harry in a hug. The boy currently being embraced lets out a little shriek of surprise, before he’s hugging Aziraphale back, guilt returning along with a soft, fond smile. A moment later the Angel shifts, letting Harry go and frowning as severely as he can.
(Which, honestly, when directed at Harry, is not very severe at all.)
“You scared us!” He blurts, patting Harry down for bruises or wounds. He bites his lip, leaning back to regard them both. “Both of you ought to know better than to run off like that!”
Then, his eyes catch the dog. He blinks.
There’s a name on the tip of his tongue. Oddly enough, but the mutt, of all things, gives the Angel pause. He stands once again, regarding the dog with the expression of someone trying to read a faded, dusty title on the spine of a book. It looks to be just as confused, falling back on its haunches with an expression that manages to be stunned. Or, whatever that might be for a dog. Then, as if nothing at all had happened, the two break eye contact.
The Angel shakes his head and smiles.
“What’s his name?”
Harry cards a hand through its fur, and grins.
“Dog.”
It seems satisfied enough with the name, even if Aziraphale and Neville's baffled expressions are any indicators of their opinions of the title. Crowley, of course, only laughs.