The rain had a miserable, indecisive quality, misting more than falling, making the London air feel like a damp flannel pressed against the face. It was the kind of night John Constantine lived for after a job—a moment of quiet anonymity to wash away the stink of brimstone and broken rituals. He leaned against the graffiti-scarred brick of a forgotten alley, the only light coming from the flickering neon of a shop bleeding around the corner. The acrid tang of ozone still clung to his trench coat, a scent only he could smell.
He fumbled a Silk Cut from its crumpled pack, shielding it with a cupped hand as he lit it. The first drag of nicotine was a familiar sacrament, a brief, smoky prayer to normalcy. The banker's greed-demon had been a nasty piece of work, all teeth and whispers of financial ruin. Kept trying to convince John to sign over his soul for a few quid and a decent mortgage rate. As if he hadn't heard that song before. John had sent it screaming back to whatever sub-level of Hell it called home, but the effort had left him knackered.
All he wanted now was a pint and a few hours of forgetting. Maybe catch the late match at Murphy's if his luck held.
That's when the air changed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a feeling. A sudden, sharp pressure against his senses, like the world holding its breath before a lightning strike. The hair on his arms stood up. The taste of ozone intensified, now laced with something else… something raw and wild and achingly powerful.
"Bollocks," he muttered, his moment of peace shattered. "Not again."
His gaze, honed by years of spotting things that shouldn't be there, swept the alley. It landed on a small shape huddled by the overflowing bins at the far end. A kid. A scrawny little thing in clothes that were far too big for him, his dark hair plastered to his forehead by the damp. He was breathing in harsh, ragged gasps, his small hands braced against the grimy metal of a dumpster.
John's first thought was mundane: a runaway. Probably got tired of mum's boyfriend using him as a punching bag. Happened more than people liked to admit around these parts.
His second thought, as his magical senses kicked in proper, was considerably less mundane.
The boy was a bloody bonfire in a matchbox. A blindingly bright core of pure, untamed magic was flaring around him, so potent it was warping the very air. John had to blink twice to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. In thirty years of dealing with the supernatural, he'd rarely seen raw power like this. And it was completely uncontrolled, chaotic, like a dam about to burst.
But wrapped around it, latched onto the boy's forehead like a psychic leech, was a stain. A vile, curdled patch of wrongness that made John's stomach turn. It was old soul-magic, parasitic and profane, and it was actively feeding on the boy's fear and misery.
John saw the future in a dizzying, sickening flash: the boy's magic, choked and poisoned by that stain, turning inward until it exploded. A wave of uncontrollable, destructive force. An Obscurus. A walking magical bomb that would take out half the borough before anyone even knew what was happening.
He'd seen one before, in Sudan. The cleanup had taken three months and two memory-wipe teams.
"Shit," he said under his breath, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his heel.
This was not how he'd planned to spend his evening.
He pushed himself off the wall, his exhaustion replaced by a familiar, weary alertness. The kid hadn't noticed him yet, too wrapped up in whatever had sent him running. John could see the tear tracks on his cheeks, barely visible in the dim light. Fresh ones too, by the look of it.
John approached slowly, hands visible, the way you'd approach a spooked animal. Or a unexploded bomb.
"Oi," he said, his voice a low rasp. Not threatening, but not gentle either. The tone of a man who's seen it all and is terminally unimpressed. "You. The magical hazard."
The boy flinched hard, snapping his head up. His eyes were a startling, luminous green, wide with a fear that was clearly his default state. But beneath it, John saw a flicker of something else. Defiance. The kid had some fight left in him, which was good. Made things easier.
The boy scrambled back, pressing himself against the dumpster, trying to make himself smaller. It was a practiced movement. This wasn't the first time he'd tried to disappear.
"I-I didn't do anything," the boy stammered, his voice barely a whisper.
"Didn't do anything? Lad, you just ran through London leaving a magical trail a blind troll could follow," John countered, stopping a few feet away. He dug out another cigarette, more for something to do with his hands than because he needed it. "You're magical, aren't you? And someone's been making you feel bad about it."
The boy's face went dead pale, his small hands clenching into fists. "I'm not supposed to talk about the... the strange things. Uncle Vernon says they're not real."
"I've got the sight, kid. See things other folks don't," John said, taking a slow drag. He could see it all now, layered like an onion of misery. The faint glamour of old protective wards, powerful but frayed around the edges. The echoes of neglect, of systematic emotional abuse. The crushing weight of a childhood spent being told you're wrong for existing.
But there was something else. A watching presence, distant but persistent. Someone was keeping tabs on this boy.
John's eyes narrowed as he traced the magical threads. Professional job, whoever was doing it. Not government – too subtle for that. This was wizard work.
"Interesting," he murmured, taking another drag. "Someone's watching you, kid. Got magical surveillance all over this area. Whoever they are, they're good at it."
John studied the boy more carefully. Six, maybe five years old. Malnourished, definitely. The clothes hanging off him weren't just hand-me-downs; they were designed to make him look smaller, more pathetic. Classic abuse tactics. Make the victim think they deserved it.
But it was the scar that really caught his attention. A jagged lightning bolt, almost hidden by his fringe. It pulsed with that wrongness, that parasitic stain that made John's teeth ache just looking at it.
He knelt, bringing himself closer to the boy's level. The smell of old sin from the scar was nauseating up close, like meat left too long in the sun.
"What's your name, son?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral.
"Harry," the boy whispered, still wary. "Harry Potter."
The name didn't ring any bells. John had heard of a Potter or two in magical circles—old family, decent reputation—but nothing recent. Nothing that would explain this level of power or the soul-fragment riding shotgun in the kid's head.
"Well, Harry Potter," John said, taking another drag and blowing the smoke away from the kid, "looks like you're in a spot of bother. A very big, very magical spot of bother."
Harry hugged his knees tighter. "I don't know what you're talking about. Magic isn't real. Uncle Vernon says—"
"Uncle Vernon's a lying sack of shit," John interrupted flatly. "Magic's as real as the rain falling on your head. And you, kid, you're drowning in it."
Harry's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. No adult had ever talked about Uncle Vernon that way. No adult had ever acknowledged that the strange things that happened around Harry were real.
"The things that happen around you," John continued, watching Harry's face carefully. "Windows breaking when you're angry. Hair growing back overnight when someone cuts it too short. Sometimes making bullies trip or fall when they're picking on you. That ring any bells?"
Harry's eyes went wide. Those were all things that had happened. Things he'd been punished for. Things he'd been told were his fault, his freakishness, his wrongness.
"How do you know that?" Harry whispered.
"Because I can see what you are," John said simply. "And what you are, kid, is a wizard. A bloody powerful one too. Problem is, someone's done something very nasty to you. Something that's making all that power twist and turn ugly inside you."
He pointed at Harry's scar with his cigarette. "That mark on your head? That's not from any accident. That's a magical wound. And there's something living in it that shouldn't be there."
Harry's hand flew to his forehead, covering the scar instinctively. "It hurts sometimes. When I'm scared or angry."
"I'll bet it does." John's voice was grim. "It's feeding off those feelings. Getting stronger. And if it keeps growing..." He didn't finish the sentence. The kid was scared enough already.
John took another drag, thinking fast. The surveillance was a problem. Professional watchers meant this kid was important to someone, and they wouldn't appreciate interference. But leaving him here was like leaving a lit stick of dynamite in a nursery.
He could work around watchers. Had done it before. The trick was misdirection, not confrontation. Make them see what they expected to see.
Besides, the kid reminded him of someone. Another boy with too much power and not enough guidance. Tim Hunter had turned out alright in the end, but it had been a near thing.
"Tell me about these people watching you," John said, crouching down to Harry's level again. "You know about them?"
Harry shook his head. "Uncle Vernon just says I'm not allowed to wander off. That there are... consequences."
"Right." John's jaw tightened. The watchers weren't just monitoring – they were part of the control system. "Well, that makes things interesting."
"Tell you what, Harry Potter," John said, crushing his cigarette under his boot. "You've got two choices. You can stay here and wait for the next time you get scared or angry, and hope you don't blow a hole in the world when that thing in your head finally gets hungry enough."
Harry's face went even paler, if that was possible.
"Or," John continued, "you can come with me. I'll teach you how not to go boom. How to use what you've got instead of letting it use you. But you listen to me—you do what I say, when I say it. No questions unless you're clever enough to ask the right ones."
He looked down at the boy, this small, broken thing that was somehow one of the most magically powerful beings he'd ever encountered. "I won't lie to you, kid. It won't be easy. The world I live in… it's not nice. It's not safe. And some of the things you'll learn will give you nightmares."
John's voice softened just a fraction. "But you'll never have to hide what you are again. You'll never have to be ashamed of it. And you'll never have to face it alone."
For the first time, Harry saw an adult look at his "freakishness" not with fear or disgust, but with understanding. This strange, tired man in the trench coat didn't think he was wrong or broken. He thought he was powerful.
After a lifetime of being told he was nothing, that was everything.
Harry gave a single, shaky nod.
"Good," John grunted, standing up and dusting off his hands. "Rule one: keep up. Rule two: do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. Rule three: never, ever lie to me. I can smell lies from a mile away, and I don't have the patience for them."
He turned and began walking out of the alley, his footsteps echoing off the wet brick. "Oh, and Harry? From now on, when someone asks you about the freaky stuff? You tell them to piss off. You don't owe anyone explanations for what you are."
Harry scrambled to his feet, his too-big shoes squelching in the puddles as he hurried to catch up. For the first time in his life, someone was walking away and expecting him to follow instead of hoping he'd disappear.
It felt like the beginning of everything.
"Where are we going?" Harry asked, half-running to keep pace with John's longer strides.
"My place," John said without looking back. "Need to get a proper look at that thing in your head. Figure out what we're dealing with before it decides to get ambitious."
As they emerged from the alley onto the main street, John kept his senses sharp, tracking the magical surveillance. There – a mundane-looking woman walking a cat about fifty meters away. And there – a man reading a newspaper under a streetlight who'd been in the same spot for too long.
"Listen carefully," he said quietly to Harry. "We're being watched by people who think they know what's best for you. They're not bad people, probably, but they're not thinking this through."
He pulled out his mobile and hit a number on speed dial, but his other hand was already working, fingers tracing small sigils in the air. Misdirection charms, subtle ones that would make the watchers see a man making a phone call and a lost child being helped.
"Chas? Yeah, it's me. I need a ride, but make it look like a good Samaritan thing. Yeah, like that time in Cardiff... No, not to the pub. Got a situation."