Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

A/N: Here's the first chapter for the sequel to 'Once is Happenstance'. The updates for this one are going to run a lot slower than for OiH, simply because I'm working on a NaNoWriMo project (that's National Novel Writer's Month) that's taking most of my energy. At the most, I'd say look for weekly updates. If they happen more often, then that'll be good, but I don't expect it.

This story takes place the October following the events of OiH - and just to clarify things, I'm going with JKR's original intent of Harry being born in 1980, so he's 27, Dean's 28, and Sam's 24. I hope this one lives up to the expectations set forth in OiH.

Twice is Circumstance

1:24 am, October 10, 2007
219 Martin Lane
Leeville, Louisiana

It was supposed to be a simple banishing. Harry had read all the little news articles, read up on the local legends, visited the site… Everything had led him to believe it was a simple ghost a little too hung up on revenge. What the Winchesters would have called a 'salt-and-burn', though Harry preferred to banish spirits like this; but that was the difference between him and the Winchesters – he had his magic available to him, they had to rely on muggle means. It wasn't that one way was better or worse than the other; the Hunters simply did what each knew best.

He had tried the incantation four times before the spirit had thrown him through a wall. Well, this isn't working. Harry rolled his eyes at his own obviousness. Time to pull back and reassess the situation, Potter. Groaning a little, Harry climbed to his feet, picking slivers out of his palms as he did so. He suddenly stilled when he heard something… off. The ghost was off in a different part of the house – Really, it's more of a shack. He slipped up to the Harry-shaped hole in the thin wall and peered around the corner. What he saw made a grin surface on his face.

The spirit was sweeping down a rickety staircase, all skeletal and claw-y and trying like hell to be frightening, only to be hit dead-center by a blast of rock-salt from a pistol-grip shotgun. It dissipated in a cloud of black smoke. Before Harry could make his presence known, Dean Winchester's voice spoke. "Well, hell. No need for the EMF on this one, Sammy. Certainly looked like a torqued-off dead bitch to me."

"Sam," Sam corrected. "And I told you before this could have waited."

"No, it couldn't," Dean argued. "I've told you a thousand times already to give it a rest. I made the only choice I could. I don't regret it – why should you?"

"Um… Because you're my brother? What the fuck happened to 'what's dead should stay dead'?"

"We are so not having this conversation again," Dean sounded more than a little irate.

The ghost chose that moment to reappear. "Duck," Sam said, casually firing another blast of rock-salt into it. "'Again'? We've never actually finished it, so how can we be having it again?"

"Sammy, give it a fucking rest! I told you – there's no getting out of it. You try to save me and you'll just end up…" Dean rammed his fist through the wall opposite of where Harry was watching from the shadows. "Look, let's just burn this bitch and head up to New Orleans for a couple of days, what do you say?" The ghost reappeared again, screeching and wailing, and was shot a second time by Dean.

Harry figured now would be a good time to announce his presence, otherwise he just might end up getting shot, and that was definitely not on his to-do list for the night. "Lumos," he whispered and stepped through the hole in the wall. He didn't flinch back when two shotguns were aimed in his direction. "Fancy meeting you here – I have to wonder how the two of you ever manage to finish a Hunt, what with all your snarking."

"Jesus, Harry. Give a guy a little warning next time." Dean lowered the shotgun and Sam pointed his towards the ceiling.

"Yeah. Good to see you again, though…" Sam eyed Harry's torn t-shirt and the thick layer of dust coating him, "you kinda look like crap." Sam smiled at Harry, but it was a little strained.

"Getting thrown through a wall will do that to anyone. Let's get out of this place – the spirit here's not as simple as I'd thought. I need a bit of a drink before I figure out what to do next, so why don't we go find a beer and catch up, yeah?"

Dean shrugged, "Sounds like a plan, so long as you explain that whole 'not as simple as you thought' bit."

"No problem," Harry crossed the creaking floor and followed the Winchesters outside, slamming the door behind him just as the extremely angry spirit came screaming towards him.

"Where are you staying?" Sam asked just as Dean said, "Where's the Harley?"

"Super 8 in Houma," Harry answered. "Nox, vestus reparo," he waived his wand over his clothes, "Scourgify." Tucking his wand back in its holster on his left forearm, he paused by the black Chevy Impala parked on the street and grabbed his jacket off the decrepit picket fence where he'd left it before venturing into the house. "And I apparated down here tonight - my bike's still at the hotel."

"That's your spinny-disappearing-thing, right?" Dean dug his keys out of his jacket pocket and unlocked the Impala, grinning at how Harry had cleaned and repaired his clothes.

"That it is, mate. How about you two, where are you staying?" Harry slid into the car's back seat after Dean unlocked the door.

"Cut Off," Dean stated with a little grimace.

Sam snickered and closed the passenger-side door, "Dean's a little upset that the closest lodging is a B&B. He has something against good coffee, I think."

"It ain't the coffee, Sam, it's the doilies and the lace," Dean shuddered melodramatically and started the car. "So, Harry. What's so unusual about this ghost?"

As Dean navigated the short street back to the main road, the sound of Metallica's Black album playing quietly on the speakers, Harry started telling the brothers what he'd learned about the spirit inhabiting the small, ramshackle, two-story house at 219 Martin Lane.

"As far as I was able to find, the ghost back there was, once upon a time, Justine Espoir. Local legend has it that when her fiancé failed to return from Germany in 1918, she doused herself in chicken blood and walked into the swamp – suicide by alligator. According to the backlog of newspapers in the Lafourche Parish Public Library up in Thibodaux, however, Justine Espoir died of influenza before she ever had the chance to find out that her betrothed wasn't coming home." Harry removed his silver cigarette case from his jeans pocket.

"Dude! No smoking in my car!" Harry sighed and snapped the case shut while Dean made a right turn onto Old Highway One, headed north towards a town that more on offer than fresh shellfish. "If that's so, then why's she here? If her boy-toy was already dead when she died, then she wouldn't've stuck around. And if she's been here for almost ninety years, why haven't there been any spook-related problems until the last two months?"

Harry shrugged, "I honestly don't know right now. I do know that I tried banishing it – standard anti-necromantic spell, you know? One I've used successfully more times than I can count. I tried four damn times and it had absolutely no effect."

"What could be causing the problem, do you think?" Sam asked.

"There's a promising-looking pub up in Golden Meadow, by the way. As to why the spell went wonky, I'm not too sure. The last time I had a problem like this, it was because I was in an area delineated as an anti-magic zone. That obviously isn't the case here, because I was able to charm the lock on the door open, and my light spell worked just fine."

"Golden Meadow?" Dean nudged the Impala's speed up as they left Leeville behind them.

"Yeah, about ten miles up the road. You said there've been some spook-related problems lately?"

Dean nodded, his fingers tapping along with the drums on the cassette. "You didn't know?"

Harry shook his head, "I only read the papers and whatnot when I'm looking into creatures. There's a variation on the four-corners spell that can home in on spirits. I spend most winters either here along the Gulf or over in southern California and tend to do little else than these simple banishings until the snow melts further north. I had quite enough of winter growing up in the UK."

Dean chuckled a little, "Yeah, I don't much like snow, either."

"So, what have you found out about the ghost?"

Sam rolled his window down a little; for all that it was the middle of October and the middle of the night, they were in the southernmost reaches of the Louisiana bayou and it was muggy as all hell, even if it wasn't all that hot. "Pretty much the same things as you – name, local history, death. Didn't know that part about her fiancé being dead, though. Where'd you find that?"

"I checked into the records at that church just up the street from her house."

"Other than that, there have been five people killed in that house in the last eight weeks."

"Any connection?"

Dean snorted, "Hell yeah, they're all connected. Seems like most of the people in this part of the country are all cousins – it's worse than those jokes about Arkansas and Tennessee."

Sam rolled his eyes. "It's not that bad, Dean." Turning a little to talk to Harry's face, Sam continued. "They are, or rather, were the last living members of the ghost's family. A fifty year-old man who had been her grand-nephew, his daughter and her husband, and a brother/sister pair from a slightly different branch of the family. The boy was killed first, back during the third week of August. According to the newspaper, his friends had dared him to spend the night in the old house. The sister was killed two days later. No one's really sure why she went into the house, but she did."

"What about the kids' parents?"

"Died in an airplane crash a year ago," Harry didn't know why, but Dean had an 'I-told-you-so' tone in his voice.

"And the others?"

Sam shook his head at his brother. "The grand-nephew, we know, had been a lifetime sleepwalker. He lived a couple of streets away from the ghost's house, and the official cause of death was an accident. The coroner said he figured the man had started having bad dreams because of the kids' deaths, and sleepwalked himself into the house and tripped on the stairs – this was the second week of September. Just last week, the daughter and her husband flew in to finalize the estate and completely up and disappeared. No bodies, no sign of anything unusual, other than the fact they were just gone."

"What was the name of that bar you mentioned?" Dean asked, slowing the Impala to match the speed limit sign posted just inside the city limits of Golden Meadow.

"Don't recall, but it should be just a block or two up here on the right," Harry replied.

Dean spotted the distinctive neon of a bar just as Harry said that, and pulled the car into the rather deserted parking lot. "So, tomorrow we should see about checking out the house in the daylight."

Harry nodded, "Would probably be a good idea." He pulled his jacket on to hide his wand holster before following the Winchesters into the bar.

2:05 am, October 10, 2007
Sharky's
Golden Meadow, Louisiana

After locating a corner booth in the small, smoky, nearly empty bar, Sam ordered a Coke, Dean got a bottle of beer, and Harry requested a bottle of bourbon. Dean looked from the full bottle of Kentucky booze to Harry and back with an incredulous look on his face. "Going for alcohol poisoning?"

Harry chuckled and filled the scotch glass the waitress had left with the bottle. He downed it in a couple of swallows, "Not in the least, mate. I have an insanely high tolerance for all poisons, alcohol included."

"How's that?" Sam asked, popping the tab on his can of soda.

"Got bit by a basilisk when I was twelve," Harry replied, refilling the glass. "The bite was healed by a phoenix's tears, and the tears have remained in my system all this time. It's a bitch – I have to really try to get drunk. Found that out when I tried drowning some bad memories just before I left home. On the upside though, I never get sick."

"This would be the same basilisk you mentioned having dealt with before when we were researching that gig up in Iowa, right?" Dean took a swallow of his beer.

Harry nodded, "Yeah, one and the same. Damn thing was loose in my school… No one else was doing anything about it. Some of the students had been petrified by it and there was talk about shutting the school down. I wasn't about to let that happen – Hogwarts was my home, and I really didn't fancy telling my relatives why I was back at their place ahead of schedule – they weren't all that fond of me, nor I of them. My friend, Ron, and I went looking for it. We weren't alone; we had our Defense professor with us – albeit at wand-point. Things went from bad to worse when the professor tried obliviating us with Ron's wand – which had been broken earlier in the year – and the spell backfired. I got separated from Ron and the professor and time was of the essence. Ron's little sister was being held hostage in the basilisk's den, and I… Well, I couldn't just leave her there."

"What's 'obliviating'? You've mentioned it before," Sam asked.

"The obliviate spell removes a portion of a person's memory." Realizing they were no longer in the car, Harry retrieved his cigarette case and lit one with a small smile of satisfaction.

"Oh, like the neuralizers in Men in Black," Dean grinned.

Harry shrugged and finished off a third glass of bourbon. "Dunno, mate. Never saw that one." He sat the glass down and leaned back in the bench seat of the booth; he liked talking about things with Hunters – they rarely asked for more information than they'd been given. Hunters and soldiers both know that bad shit happens, and they know that no one wants to have to relive their worst memories just to satiate someone else's curiosity. "I suppose it doesn't matter much. From what I recall, you're pretty accurate with those flicks of yours."

Dean grinned, "Yeah… Too much late-night cable, I suppose." The three hunters spent an hour or so catching up and just talking before Dean excused himself to go to the bathroom.

As soon as Dean was out of earshot, Sam took a breath and let it out slowly. Harry cocked his head to the side and really looked at the younger Winchester. "Something's bothering you."

Sam nodded, "Yeah, there is."

"Want to tell me, or is it none of my bloody business?"

"What do you know of demons?"

Harry shrugged a little, "They are magical beings normally bound to the Abyssal plane and not something I would ever want to tangle with, even if others don't share the sentiment."

"What about deals?"

"With demons?" Sam nodded. Harry ran a hand through his hair, "They have rules, and the rules can vary with the type of demon dealt with. They don't do deals for nothing, and prefer payment in souls – which is probably the only reason why the Dark Lord never tried that avenue in his quests for immortality. What demon would grant that sort of power, knowing they'd never collect the soul in question?" Harry glanced towards the short hall across the room that led to the bathrooms. "What's this about?"

"Dean did something phenomenally stupid, and I've been looking for a way to fix it."

Harry's gaze darted back to Sam. Sam was tense, pale around the edges. "I would have thought, what with you two's line of work, that he'd know better. What was the deal for?"

"Me."

"Come again? Look, mate, I can't help if I don't know what I'm dealing with. Why don't you start at the beginning and make sense this time, yeah?"

Sam turned his head around to look for Dean. His brother was just emerging from the hallway. "Not right now – Dean's told me to drop it. He thinks there isn't anything he can do."

"Fatalistic much?"

Sam forced a short laugh, "Something like that."

"We'll figure something out tomorrow," Harry said, just loud enough that Dean, who was now only a few steps away from their table, could hear him.

Sam caught on to what Harry was doing and nodded, "Yeah, there's got to be something either in the local records that we've overlooked or something at the house."

"Thought we already agreed to do that?" Dean said and then gestured to a pool table not far from where they were sitting. "Either of you up for a game of pool?"

Harry smirked, "Sorry, mate. I don't play billiards. Darts, though… Those are a completely different story."

"I can do darts," Dean replied, echoing Harry's grin. "Come on; let's see what you've got."

"What do you say, Sam? Want to see me beat the tar out of your brother?"

Sam shrugged a little, "I don't think it'll be as easy as you think, but why not? I could do with a laugh."

The three Hunters moved their drinks to a table that had a good view of the dartboard. "What are we playing for?" Dean asked while Sam got a set of darts from the bartender.

"Surely you don't need cash already?" Harry reached into the inner pocket on his black leather biker jacket.

Dean shrugged, "Not really – thanks for that, by the way – it's just that I don't play solely for fun. It makes sure the other person isn't just fucking around."

Setting a small black case – it looked to be about the same size as a glasses case – on the table, Harry nodded. "I suppose I can understand that. How about we wager favors?"

"Favors? That some weird Brit thing I don't know about?"

Sam tapped Dean on the shoulder and handed him three metal-tipped darts that had metallic blue fletching. "These were the best ones he had, and playing for favors is something we used to do in school. It's like… say I was playing for favors with someone who had some of the same classes I had. If I won and then wanted to skip class the next day, I could call in the favor and the person who lost would tape the lecture for me or something like that."

"Exactly," Harry punctuated his statement by flipping open his case. "What type of tips?"

"Metal," Dean replied, looking over Harry's shoulder. The little case contained eight dart-shafts, a miniature Ziploc of fletching in different colors, and another baggie of tips in metal, plastic, magnetic, and what appeared to be Velcro. He let out a low whistle. "Damn, Harry. That's quite a kit you've got there."

Harry let out a little chuckle, "Like I implied, Dean, prepare for an abject lesson in humility."

"And he's modest, too!" Sam quipped in a tone reminiscent of an infomercial announcer. Sam shut up at the identical looks of 'WTF?' leveled at him. "So… Will I need to keep score, then?"

"If you would," Harry replied, assembling three darts with the same precision and speed Sam normally saw when Dean stripped a gun for cleaning. "I would imagine we should stick to straight darts for now, yeah?"

"Why not? Play from 501." Dean looked over the darts Sam had retrieved from the bartender. They'll do, I suppose. He stepped up to the line and threw them. He hit the inner bull's-eye twice and the outer portion of it once. "125," He stated with a smug grin.

Harry chuckled, "Not bad, mate, but step aside." After Dean had retrieved his three darts from the board, Harry took a deep breath and held it for a moment. He let it out as he threw the first dart. It hit the triple-ring of the twenty segment. His next dart hit nearly the same place. The last dart was always the hardest, as Dean could attest. The fletching of the first two always made it hard to get a clear flight line when aiming for such a small target. Harry focused in on the exposed corner of the segment where it butted up against the area for the one. It hit in its place with a satisfying thunk. "That's 180 to me."

Sam noted the score on a bar napkin and had to grin at Dean's expression. During Dean's next turn, he managed to hit the inner bull's-eye all three times. However, Harry reenacted his first turn and scored another 180 points. Dean managed a score of 170 for his third time at the line. Harry waited mock-impatiently as Dean collected his darts. "If you think it'd help, mate, you're welcome to use my kit."

Dean just glared at him. "Stuff it, shorty."

"Suit yourself," Harry stepped up to the line again. He hit two triple-twenties.

"You know, if he hits a triple-seven, he's going to win," Sam mentioned conversationally. Dean looked at Sam as though to say, 'No shit, Sherlock.'

Harry, who had first learned to throw darts at a muggle pub in London during a football match which resulted in spawning a fistfight among the patrons of the pub, ignored the comment. He threw the last dart with a flick of his wrist. "And that's game," he said with a smile.

"Rematch," Dean said, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked intimidating, but he was biting his tongue to keep from laughing – Harry was a damn fine shot and he couldn't help but wonder how accurate he'd be with a gun.

The second game was closer than the first – Dean only lost by ten points that time around. Sam stepped in for a couple of games against Harry and managed to hold his own – the first game was a dead tie and the second Sam lost by a single point.

After the darts were put away, Dean cracked open a second beer and asked Harry, "So, where'd you learn to play?"

Harry poured the last of his bourbon into the glass and took a swallow before answering. "One of my instructors thought it was a good way to build accuracy in a non-lethal environment. Of course, his idea of non-lethal and mine were decidedly different." Harry leaned forward and turned his head to the left. He lifted his messy black hair off his neck, revealing a thick scar that twisted up into his hair. "The pub he took me to was a rather rowdy place, especially when a game was on. Football – um, soccer, I mean. Anyway, things got said, fists started to fly, and before I knew it, I was hit by a Guinness bottle." Harry sat back in the booth and laughed. "Found out later it was in that same bar, during a similar fight, mind you, that my teacher lost an eye. I think I was the only person he ever told that to – everyone else assumed he'd gotten it in his line of work. He was an auror – wizarding police. And with him being who he was, I ended up with a three-hour lecture on being aware of my surroundings at all times. By the time he was done, it was too late to get the gash healed by a mediwitch, hence the scar. He justified it as telling me that it'd make a good reminder to never let my guard down."

Dean smiled, though it was tinged with something bittersweet, "Sounds like your teacher and our dad were two of a kind. I got the same lecture, only it was some flying glass and a poltergeist."

"And the scar? Or do I want to know?"

"Missed my right kidney by that much," he held up his thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart.

"I don't remember that one," Sam said, draining the last of his soda.

"It was just after I started Hunting with him regular – I think you were fourteen. Wasn't that the year you did that science-fair project on electro-whateveritwas?"

"Electromagnetism, Dean. I know you know what it was – hell, you helped me more on that project than the library did." Something suddenly occurred to Sam. Dean may like to pretend to be clueless most of the time, and I know he'd rather watch television than read a book, but… He's not stupid. He built our EMF reader out of a walkman, for Christ's sake. Why's he so intent on making people think he's an idiot?

12:00 pm, October 10, 2007
Château Rochelle B&B
Cut Off, Louisiana

It was relatively easy for Harry to find out where Dean and Sam were staying – there was only one B&B in Cut Off, after all. Juggling a box of Krispy Kremes, two large Styrofoam glasses of coffee, and a bag of energy drinks he kicked the door of a modern, two-story house instead of knocking. An elderly woman wearing a sunshine-yellow pants-suit answered. "May I help you?" she had a light Creole accent.

Harry smiled charmingly at the woman, "Yes, ma'am. I'm here to see a couple of friends of mine, Dean and Sam?"

"Those charming young men?" Harry nodded. "The 'brothers'," she even made air-quotes with her fingers, "are staying in room three."

Harry snickered as he followed the woman into the house, "Ma'am, they really are brothers. I don't think any couple would last all that long with the sheer amount of bickering those two do."

The woman shook her head, "Don't think you can fool me, son. I've seen my fair share of life, you know."

Harry's snicker grew into a genuine laugh, "I'll be sure to tell them that, ma'am."

The woman retreated into an officey-looking area near the front door, "Their room is just down that hall," she pointed to a hallway to Harry's left.

"Thank you, ma'am." Still chuckling, Harry found room three and repeated his kicking knock.

Dean answered the door, bleary-eyed and scowling. "Lady, look, I don't give a damn how good you think your cooking is –"

"Good morning to you, too, sunshine," Harry interrupted. "I brought provisions."

"Coffee?"

"Of course."

Dean seized the two Styrofoam glasses, handing one to Sam, who was sitting in an armchair not far from the door, poking through something on the laptop. "Morning, Harry."

"Sam." Harry sat the box of donuts on the dresser and peered over Sam's shoulder. "What have you found for me?"

Dean shook his head, muttering something about 'freaks who don't know what it means to get some sleep' and rummaged around in the donut box. Sam ignored his brother and removed the lid from his coffee, "Nothing new – just what I told you last night. Kaleb LeBlanc died first on his dared trip, his sister, Caroline, died next. Then Jacob Espoir 'sleepwalked' to his death. Last week, Michael Greengrass and Lorraine Greengrass, nee Espoir, were killed…" Sam trailed off when he noticed Harry's expression. "What?"

"'Greengrass'? You're sure that's the name?" Harry asked, his voice tight.

Sam nodded, "Yeah… What's up?"

"I went to school with a Greengrass. Can you tell me where that Michael fellow was from, originally?"

Sam shrugged, "Yeah. Give me an hour or so."

Dean swallowed the last bite of a jelly-filled bear-claw. "What's got you so uptight?"

"A girl I went to school with was a Greengrass. Daphne. She was a Slytherin – and though I, personally, don't believe in the House making someone evil – her family was definitely bad news. I know for a fact that her father worked for the Death Eaters. Her mother did, too, but refused to be Marked." Harry retrieved a can of Monster from his shopping bag and sat on the corner of the room's only bed.

Dean finished off his glass of coffee and tossed the empty container in a trash can. "Okay, three questions. First, 'Slytherin'?"

"My school was a boarding school. The students were separated into different Houses – dorms – Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. What House you went to depended on your personality. Slytherins tended to be cunning and ambitious and the House as a whole was thought of as the 'evil' house – regardless of the fact that there were just as many good folk from that House as there were bad, same with all the Houses." Harry sighed. "If it had been up to me, the students would have just been randomly assigned a dorm, but it wasn't so they weren't."

"Second question, 'Death Eaters'?"

Harry scrubbed a hand across his face and absently noticed that he'd forgotten to shave that morning. "Remember me telling you about that Dark Lord I had to deal with?" Dean nodded. "The Death Eaters were his followers. Evil, twisted, and rather sadistic for the most part."

"Last question, 'Marked'?"

"Each of the Death Eaters were given the choice to be Marked by the Dark Lord. Most of them took the option as a way to show their lord and master their loyalty. The Dark Mark, or morsmordre, had two main uses. The first was a way to mark specific crimes as having been done by the Death Eaters – they would conjure the morsmordre to hang in the sky over the site of whatever atrocity they'd committed. The second use was a brand on a Death Eater's left forearm. It darkened from normal scar-pale to a bright red depending on how powerful the Dark Lord was at any given time and would burn black when the Dark Lord called his followers to him."

"So you think this Greengrass dude has some connection to your evil dead man?"

Harry shook his head, "I honestly don't know for sure, but my instincts are screaming at me that there's a connection. I was once told I had good instincts – and, truth be told, they've only let me down twice."

"Yeah, Hunters have to have good instincts, else they don't Hunt for long." Dean grabbed another donut and looked over at his brother. "How's the research coming, Sammy?"

"Sam," Sam automatically corrected. "Not too well. I'm finding bits and pieces, but nothing for sure yet. Why don't you call your CIA friend, Harry?"

Harry finished off his can of energy drink and cracked open another. "I would, but my phone is currently recovering from an incident with an angry water spirit…"

Dean chuckled and handed Harry his cell. "You're hard on phones, aren't you?"

Harry shrugged, "Not really – I only go through five or six a year."

"Dude, I've had the same phone for three years. Sam's had his for four. You're hard on phones."

Harry shrugged and took Dean's cell, "Whatever, mate." He dug Leanne MacRucky's number out of his wallet and dialed.

She answered on the third ring, "Dean Winchester?"

"Nope, Leanne. Sorry to disappoint, but it's Harry."

"What happened to your cell this time?"

"It lost a fight with a water elemental."

"Only you, Harry," she replied with a little laugh. "What can I do for you?"

Harry grinned, "Ooh! I'm wounded, Leanne! I call you up and you automatically assume I need something. Can't I just call to say 'hello' every now and again?"

"You can, but you never do. Besides, you're with the Winchester brothers, so I have to assume you boys are after something."

"Should I be frightened that you seem to know me so well? Or that you recognized Dean's number?"

"Nope and no. The boys have called me every now and again over the last few months when they needed information that their Hunting contacts didn't know. So, what's going on?"

"I need information on the Greengrass family from Devon. Specifically if a Michael Greengrass ever lived in the US."

"No problem, Harry. Hang on a moment, and I'll see what the computers here have to say. Might take ten minutes, tops."

"Take your time, Leanne. Thanks."

"Well?" Dean asked when Harry fell silent.

"I'm on hold. She's checking. Has Sam found anything?"

"Not really," Sam replied. "Just a marriage certificate from Orange County, California. I'm looking into immigration records now."

After five minutes of near-silence – the only sounds Sam's typing and Dean humming under his breath – Leanne's voice finally reappeared on the phone. "You still there, Harry?"

"Yeah, Leanne. What did you find?" Harry grabbed the pen and pad of stationary off the bedside table.

"Michael Damien Greengrass, born August ninth, 1972, to Caelum and Rachel Greengrass of Devon. Pureblood family, though he was a squib. Older brother to Daphne Greengrass, born May thirtieth, 1980. Immigrated to the US in January of 1995, married Lorraine Espoir on April tenth, 1998, and died October second, 2007. No children. Caelum and Rachel Greengrass are reported as having been AK'd on July first of this year. Contrary to pureblood custom, Caelum and Rachel left their entire estate to Michael, despite his squib status. No records of Daphne exist after her Hogwarts certification in June of 1998. This help?"

"I hope so, Leanne. I'll give you a call when I find out for sure. Thanks again, love."

"Anytime, Harry. And remember – you can call me just to say hi every now and again, you know!"

"I know, I know. Talk with you later." Harry snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Dean.

"Find anything useful?"

"Don't know for sure if it's all that useful, but I now know for a fact that Michael Greengrass is the older brother of the girl I went to Hogwarts with."

Sam gave up on the laptop and shut it down. "So, are we going to go check out the house again?"

3:37 pm, October 10, 2007
219 Martin Lane
Leeville, Louisiana

Dean slapped a mosquito that had landed on the side of his neck. "Dude, I hate mosquitoes. Why couldn't we have found a job somewhere other than a swamp?"

Sam rolled his eyes, "Coming here was your idea, Dean. I was all for checking that lead on a possession up in Chicago, if you recall."

"Whatever. Next time I have the bright idea to visit a swamp, just hit me."

"I'm holding you to that."

"Gentlemen, could we please can the arguments for the time being?" Harry punctuated his comment by slamming the door to 319 Martin Lane shut behind them.

"Sure," Dean grinned. "So… Any idea what we're looking for?"

"Anything out of the ordinary, I would imagine." Harry removed his wand from his holster. "A specter doesn't just show up ninety years after its death with no reason, after all."

"I'll check upstairs," Sam volunteered.

"I'll look over this way," Dean indicated the direction of the kitchen.

Harry shrugged and set to examining the entrance hallway and the parlor.

After about ten minutes of fruitless searching, Sam was just about ready to call it a day. There had been several places the EMF had spiked, but that was to be expected. They already knew the place was haunted. Harry has a point, though. A ghost doesn't just show up after ninety years. There has to be a reason. He was finishing up checking out the last of three tiny bedrooms when he caught sight of something half-hidden by a peeling curl of faded floral wallpaper. "Dean! Harry! I think I've got something here!" he shouted, reaching out with one hand to remove the paper.

Heavy footfalls signaled Dean's arrival in the room while a crack indicated that Harry had simply bypassed the physical exertion and used his spinny-disappearing-reappearing-thing. "What's up?" Dean asked.

Sam finished removing the curl of paper, "There's something written on the wall behind this wallpaper."

"Move," Harry said. Sam stepped aside. Harry leveled his wand at the chunk of wall that had thick, black, angular markings on it. "Papyrus evanesco." The wallpaper on that entire wall shimmered into white smoke and disappeared.

"Neat trick," Dean murmured, stepping up beside Sam to examine the marks. Harry repeated the charm on all three remaining walls, another variation on the threadbare carpet covering the floor, and still another on the ceiling. All four walls had writing on them, and the floor had nine concentric circles with the same things written in each circle, the innermost circle housing an interwoven seven-point star. "Aren't these Norse runes?" Dean asked, still looking at the first wall with Sam.

Harry looked up, "Yeah, they are. The west wall is Latin, south has hieroglyphs, and the east is either Japanese or Chinese – I can't tell which."

At the mention of Latin, both of the Winchester boys turned to their left. Harry chuckled, "Don't worry about translating it. I can do that."

"You know Latin?"

"You sound surprised, Sam. Haven't you noticed what language most of my spells are in? I had to learn it in order to finish up my Hogwarts education."

Though Sam and Dean could read Latin phonetically, they were far from fluent in the language. "So, what's it say?" Dean gestured to the wall.

"It's a spell, and I'd be willing to bet money that it's repeated verbatim on all four walls."

"Would you just translate the damn thing already?"

Harry chuckled a little before clearing his throat. Sam quickly rummaged in a pocket until he came up with a memo book and a pen.

By knot of one, the spell's begun
Failed fate shun, blood shall run.
By knot of two, it cometh true
A tree of yew, within view.
By knot of three, so mote it be
Soul fly free, come to me.
By knot of four, power I'll store
Through the door, to my core.
By knot of five, the spell's alive
Their sins shrive, and right my dive.
By knot of six, the spell is fixed
Into the mix, of six and six and six.
By knot of seven, events I'll leaven
Bar them from heaven, home, and Devon.
By knot of eight, it will be fate
Salvation too late, cost cut-rate.
By knot of nine, what's done is mine.

Before the reverberation of the last word could fade, a bolt of rust-red light flared up out of the center of the star on the floor and hit Harry in the back of the head. He dropped to the floor, unconscious.

A/N2: Like I said, the updates for this one are going to be longer between than for 'Once is Happenstance'. I don't recall ever mentioning this in OiH, but I grew up in Knoxville, Iowa, and natives of that area will recognize that I used both real and fictional places in that story. In this one, all I have to say is that I've been to this region before (it was one of my favorite vacations growing up) but it was a good ten years ago, so though the town names are real enough, the actual businesses and addresses the characters go to definitely aren't.

Drop me a review and let me know what you think!