Description: On the morning of Dean Winchester's eleventh birthday, there's an owl in the tree in their front yard.
Rating: General Audiences
Tags: AU - Hogwarts/Magic, Dean-Centric, Wizards!Dean&Cas, Hufflepuff!Dean, Slytherin!Cas, Bullying, Family Drama, Light Angst, Friendships
A great Harry Potter universe fic by @profound-boning ! I mean, wizard Dean and Cas? I love it! Such a cute fic that always makes me smile when I read it. If you love Harry Potter, definitely recommend it!
DeanCas Wizarding World!AU
Note: While this does not contain spoilers for Fantastic Beasts, it does use an element of the Universe from the movie.
“Dean? Dean! Dean Michael Winchester, do not take one more step, young man!”
“I’ll be okay, Momma!” Dean barely slips through his mother’s fingers, lanky nine year-old body darting through the open door and into the open, overgrown yard. “I gotta go help!”
“Dean, don’t you dare—!”
He sprints through the cornfield.
Knowing his mom will take too long with Sammy to catch up—and have an even harder time finding him amongst the tall corn—Dean pushes himself until his Momma’s hollering is background noise to the yelling of the people at the Novak’s. There’s the fire car there, and men shouting at each other for more water, and the house burning up like on the fourth of July.
Dean throws himself into the fray.
“What—hey, watch where y’r—”
“Here, gimme a bucket!”
“Ain’t that Mary’s boy—?”
“I can help! Dad, tell ‘em! I can—”
“Get outta here, son!”
But the buckets are too heavy and the adults are pushy and strong, and Dean soon finds himself at the edge of the Novak’s previously perfectly neat property, frowning at the way the grass and dirt is all torn up all over the place. Come to think of it, the house is burning, but it sure looks broken up besides. Chewing his lip, Dean frowns and leans to the side, barely catching a glimpse of further destruction. Whatever it was that destroyed the Novak’s house, it’s still out there.
Dean allows himself a minute to feel all-encompassing fear prickle down his spine before he sets his shoulders and slinks around the back, grabbing a rock to keep behind his back just in case. “H-Hello?”
Whatever the thing is, it tore up all the Novak’s fields, too.
Dean approaches with caution, then; calling out lowly and holding so tight to his rock his knuckles turn white. He follows the main vein of destruction: a four foot deep, two foot wide ditch ripped into the earth. “Hello? Who are you—”
Dean whirls around when something snaps behind him. “A-Anyone there?”
When silence greets him, he keeps going. He goes past the Novak’s property and onto the Delaney’s following the destruction that veers into the small wood beside them. There are trees ripped out of the ground and snapped in half, and it’s hard to climb over them all in the dark. Dean’s just grunting after having pulled himself over a big one when he hears the crying. “Who’s there?” he demands.
The sound cuts out immediately and the boy feels his heart race. “I-I don’t wanna hurt you,” he says. “I swear. I just—” Holding the rock with both hands, now, he stumbles into what used to be a clearing, now totally levelled. There’s a boy curled in on himself, with wide, bright blue eyes and stringy dark hair. His face is streaked with dirt and there are smudged track all down his cheeks.
The Novak kid.
“Oh,” Dean says, half relieved, half disappointed. “It’s just you.” He walks forward. “Hey, have you seen—”
Dean stops dead. Not because the monster shows up or he’s frozen to the ground or anything… no, it’s the boy, sitting there. Castiel? Dean remembers that he’s got a weird name—religious family, Momma had said; best to stay away from them with their fire and brimstone—but he doesn’t ever remember him looking like that.
Like something out of a nightmare.
The kid’s eyes have rolled back in his head, glowing a golden white while the rest of him stretches and blurs like he moved in a photograph. He starts dissolving into angry black dust, lit in the middle with blue fire as he rises up above the ground in a cloud of vicious greyness. Dean holds tighter to his rock.
And that’s what does it; the cloud bears down on him, knocking him to the ground and the rock from his hands at he yells, tears springing to his eyes. He suddenly really wants his Mom. Groaning through his grasping sobs into the dirt, Dean crawls as far away as he possibly can. He flinches and curls into a ball when the thing that is also Castiel roars and throws around huge trees like they’re toothpicks.
And suddenly it… stops.
Trembling, Dean peaks up from where his head had been buried in his arms, eyeing the other on the other side of the clearing warily. He’s careful not to make any sudden moves; just like when he approaches the stray dog that comes around sometimes. Holding his scratched up hands in a gesture of peace, he swallows thickly. “C-Cas—um. Cas?”
The boy has his face buried in his knees. He’s shaking like a leaf.
“Cas?” Dean tries again.
When the other looks up, he’s frozen.
Dean takes nervous, abortive steps. “You’re okay,” he murmurs, keeping his voice soft like he does with Sammy. “You’re okay. I won’t hurt you. You’re okay.” He gets right up close to the boy and gives a ragged exhale. “C-C’n I sit?”
Cas curls further into himself.
“S’okay,” Dean murmurs. He puts on his best brave smile. “Just gonna sit. Look.” He sits. “What, um, what’s the matter?” But instead of answering, Castiel only reaches out a hand. His arms and hands are scarred from what Dean knows is a whip, and he still he gently touches two fingers to Dean’s forehead. He frowns, and sniffles, and when Dean next looks down, all the scratches dotting his skin are gone. “Woah.” A smile—real this time. “How’d you do that?”
Cas shrugs, biting his lip. He looks like he gonna cry again.
“I-Is that why you’re hurting?” Dean asks. “’Cause your Momma and Daddy think you’re a witch?” Dean’s own Momma had been talking about Mrs. Novak raving about evil and witches and the devil one night when he’d supposed to’ve been asleep.
Blue eyes squeeze shut and Dean’s heart squeezes with them. “Wait…” he murmurs. “Are you a witch?”
Cas looks away.
“Wow.”
“…W-Wow?”
Cas’s voice is small and scratchy, and Dean is touching his shoulder before he can think better of it. The other boy flinches, but doesn’t turn again. He looks… shocked. Confused.
“Yeah,” Dean grins. “I mean… you can do magic.”
Cas sniffles and wipes his runny nose on his dirty sleeve. He shrugs and there’s pink in his cheeks. “I-I guess.”
“Hey, can you do something right now? Somethin’ magical?”
Biting his lip again, Castiel furrows his brows and looks around, finally staring at a crushed white daisy in the dirt. Narrowing his eyes and looking vaguely like he’s gonna poop, Dean watches in utter amazement when the thing straightens up out of the ground, plucks itself, and moves to hover right in front of Dean’s face.
“Awesome,” the boy in question whispers.
Cas blushes again. “Um. Thanks.”
“Shoot,” Dean mumbles, carefully picking the stem from its position in mid-air. “I wish I could do magic.”
“Y-You do?”
“Yeah, ‘course! I could curse my enemies! And help my friends! And be rich for Momma and Daddy and Sammy! You can do tons of stuff with magic.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah! You’re real lucky, Cas.”
Castiel licks his lips and looks out towards his burning house, biting the inside of his cheek. “I don’t feel lucky.”
“Did you, um. Did you…?”
A nod. “Th-They kept h-hurting me. I can’t control it, even though I try. I-I try and force it away. But sometimes it just…” He swallows thickly, and there are tears in his bright, big blue eyes. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
Dean doesn’t answer, mostly ‘cause he doesn’t know.
“I know they’re dead,” Cas continues. “I can feel it right…” He presses his hand to his chest and shakes his head. “I killed them.”
“Not on purpose!” Dean replies. “You said it yourself, you can’t control—”
“Still my fault,” Cas mutters. “Still my hands. Besides, I’m an abomination. And if you like magic, you’re one, too. Everybody says that and everybody knows it.”
Dean frowns. “Well everybody’s wrong,” he throws back. “Magic is good, and you’re good, and screw the people who hurt you just because you’re better than them. You can come live with me n’Sammy.”
Castiel whirls around, and underneath all the grief and shame it’s plain on his face that he doesn’t dare hope.
“You’ll come live with us,” Dean says with all the authority he can muster. Then, shyly, he holds out the daisy. “Here, this is yours.”
“Oh.” Cas eyes the flower and lowers his eyes. “Y-You can keep it.”
“Really?”
Cas nods, once and bashfully. “Yeah.”
“Wow, thanks!” And just like in the storybooks, he leans over and kisses Castiel right on the cheek. Clearing his throat as he pulls away, cheeks blotchy and red, he licks his lips. “Um. I’m Dean, by the way.”
hogwarts tigerboy au where first-year!cas gets detention and gets lost in the forbidden forrest. alone and scared, cas wanders until he sees a den with a strange creature in it. dean is wary of wizards. when foreign smell startles him awake he gives his best roar. unfortunately dean is too young to make proper roar, and cas just laughs. dean shows cas a way back to the castle, and they become friends and cas always sneaks out to meet dean and then cas becomes magical creatures prof and happy end
I’m geeking out over this because Hogwarts AU meets Tigerboy AU and Dean is a scary creature in the forbidden forest but he isn’t actually that scary, he’s really sweet but Wizards have hurt him in the past.
And he and Cas become friends, then more and this is too cute!
