The taxi ride back to the flat was quiet, but it was a different kind of quiet than the fearful silence Harry had lived with at the Dursleys. This was the comfortable quiet of two people who'd just shared something important and were taking time to process it.
Harry pressed his face to the window, watching London scroll past. The city looked different now—not just buildings and streets, but a place where lost children might be trapped behind walls, where spirits lingered in pain, where people like John went to help when no one else could.
"John?" Harry said finally, his breath fogging the glass.
"Yeah?"
"How many people are there like Michael? Stuck places they can't get out of?"
John took a long drag of his cigarette, considering how to answer that question honestly without giving a six-year-old nightmares. "More than there should be. Fewer than there used to be."
"Because of people like you?"
"People like us," John corrected, and Harry felt a warm glow at being included. "But there's always more work than there are people willing to do it."
Harry was quiet for another moment. "The Dursleys used to tell me that strange things happened because I was bad. But Michael wasn't bad. He was just scared."
"That's right." John stubbed out his cigarette. "And neither are you, kid. Sometimes magic happens when people are hurting, but that doesn't make the magic—or the person—evil."
"Even when it's angry magic?"
John thought about that. "Even then. Anger's not evil, Harry. It's just... energy that needs somewhere to go. The trick is learning to aim it at the right targets."
The taxi pulled up outside their building, and as they climbed the stairs to the flat, Harry found himself walking differently. A little straighter, maybe. Like someone who'd discovered he could help instead of just hurt.
Once inside, John immediately headed for the kitchen and began rummaging through cupboards. "Right, after a job like that, we need proper food. Not cereal, not takeaway. Actual cooking."
Harry watched with growing alarm as John pulled out ingredients with the air of a man declaring war on hunger itself. "Are you sure? I could—"
"No," John said firmly. "You're six. You just helped save a school from a poltergeist. You're not cooking dinner."
Twenty minutes later, they were both staring at what might have been shepherd's pie, if shepherd's pie was supposed to smell like burned rubber and have the consistency of concrete.
"Right," John said, poking the mess with a fork. "This is why takeaway was invented."
"I really could fix it," Harry offered again, though he was starting to find John's culinary disasters more amusing than alarming.
"The day I need a six-year-old to cook for me is the day I hang up my coat and take up gardening," John muttered, reaching for the phone. "Chinese or Indian?"
"What's Indian food like?" Harry asked, curious.
John paused, receiver halfway to his ear. Of course Harry wouldn't know. The Dursleys probably fed him whatever was cheapest and blandest, when they bothered to feed him at all.
"Spicy. Flavorful. Nothing like anything you've had before," John said. "Want to try it?"
Harry nodded eagerly, and John found himself smiling despite the smoking remains of dinner. Every new experience for Harry was a small victory against the Dursleys' attempts to make his world as small and gray as possible.
While they waited for the food to arrive, Harry sat cross-legged on the floor and began practicing the shielding exercises John had taught him. But something was different. Where before his magical signature had been chaotic, barely controlled, now there was a new element—a sense of purpose, of magic being shaped by intention rather than just emotion.
"You're getting stronger," John observed, settling into his chair with a fresh cigarette.
"I feel different," Harry said, not opening his eyes but maintaining his concentration. "Like the magic wants to do things now, instead of just... happening."
"That's because you've started to understand what it's for," John said. "Magic without purpose is just chaos. But magic with direction..." He gestured, and the lights in the room dimmed and brightened in a slow, steady rhythm. "That's power."
Harry opened his eyes, watching the light show with fascination. "Can you teach me to do that?"
"Eventually. But first, you need to master the basics. Can't build a house without a foundation."
The food arrived as Harry was attempting to create a shield strong enough to stop a thrown cushion (John's practical test for magical defense). The delivery driver barely glanced at the small boy surrounded by a faint shimmer of protective energy, but John made a mental note to work on making Harry's magic less visible. In his line of work, discretion was often the difference between success and becoming someone else's target.
They ate sitting on the floor, the coffee table covered with containers of curry and rice and naan bread. Harry approached each new flavor with the scientific curiosity of someone discovering that food could be more than just fuel.
"This is brilliant," Harry said around a mouthful of chicken tikka masala. "Why don't more people eat like this?"
"Because most people are afraid of trying new things," John said. "Same reason most people pretend magic doesn't exist even when it's staring them in the face."
Harry considered this while chewing thoughtfully. "Is that why you do the work you do? Because other people won't?"
"Partly." John lit a post-dinner cigarette, thinking about how to explain the complexities of his calling to a six-year-old. "But mostly because... well, someone has to. And I'm too stubborn to let the bastards win."
"Language," Harry said with a small grin, parroting what John had said to him earlier.
"Cheeky little sod," John replied, but he was smiling too. The kid was picking up his speech patterns faster than expected. Good. Better to sound like Constantine than like Vernon Dursley.
After dinner, they settled into their evening routine—Harry practicing his magical exercises while John reviewed his case notes and planned the next day's lessons. It was domestic in a way that neither of them had experienced before: comfortable, predictable, safe.
That's when Harry's magic suddenly flared, bright and wild and completely out of control.
John was on his feet in an instant, emergency containment spells already forming in his mind. But as he reached out with his magical senses, he realized what was happening.
The Horcrux fragment was trying to feed.
Harry had used a significant amount of magical energy today, and his emotional state had been heightened by the experience of helping Michael pass on. The combination had stirred the parasitic soul fragment, making it hunger for more of the power and emotion it had been dormant without.
"Harry," John said carefully, moving slowly toward the boy. "I need you to listen to me very carefully. Remember the walls we built in your mind? I need you to check them."
Harry's eyes were wide with fear, his small body rigid as wild magic sparked around him. "I can't... it's trying to get out. It's angry that I helped Michael."
"Of course it is," John said grimly. The fragment would hate any use of Harry's power for good—it had been created through murder and would always be drawn to darkness. "But you're stronger than it is. Remember what we practiced."
John began chalking a quick containment circle around Harry, not to trap him but to give him a safe space to work. "Close your eyes. Find your mental walls. Tell me what you see."
"They're... they're cracking," Harry whispered, sweat beading on his forehead despite the room's chill. "There are holes, and something's trying to get through."
"Right. We're going to fix them. But I need you to stay calm and follow my voice."
For the next twenty minutes, John talked Harry through reinforcing his mental defenses, guiding him step by step through the process of repairing the barriers that kept the Horcrux contained. It was delicate work—too aggressive and they might damage Harry's own mind, too gentle and the fragment might break free entirely.
Finally, Harry's magical signature stabilized, the wild flares settling back into controlled emanations.
"Better?" John asked, though he could already see the answer in Harry's posture.
Harry nodded, though he looked exhausted. "It was so angry. Like it hated that I felt good about helping someone."
"That's exactly what it was," John said, settling beside Harry and pulling him into an awkward but comforting embrace. "That thing in your head—it's made of murder and hate. Of course it doesn't want you to feel good about helping people."
"Will it always be like this?" Harry asked in a small voice. "Will it always try to make me bad?"
John was quiet for a moment, considering his answer. He could lie, offer false comfort. But Harry deserved the truth.
"I don't know, kid," he said finally. "But I know this—every time you choose to help someone, every time you use your power for good, you're proving that you're stronger than it is. And that's what matters."
Harry leaned against John's chest, still shaking slightly from the magical strain. "John? What if I can't always fight it? What if someday it wins?"
"Then I'll remind you who you really are," John said simply. "That's what family does."
The word hung in the air between them—family. Neither of them had planned to use it, but it felt right. More right than anything had felt in John's life for a very long time.
"Get some sleep," John said gently. "Tomorrow we'll work on strengthening those walls even more. And maybe we'll tackle the mystery of why my cooking is worse than most magical curses."
Harry giggled despite his exhaustion. "That's not much of a mystery. You burn everything."
"Oi, enough cheek from you," John said, ruffling Harry's hair. "Off to bed before I decide to cook breakfast again tomorrow."
As Harry got ready for bed, John sat in his chair and thought about the evening's events. The boy was growing stronger, but so was the thing inside him. Eventually, they'd need more than mental walls—they'd need a permanent solution.
But that was a problem for another day. Tonight, Harry Potter was safe, fed, and loved. In John Constantine's experience, that was about as much victory as you could ask for.
From the bedroom came Harry's voice, sleepy but content: "John? Thank you. For everything."
"Yeah, well," John called back, lighting one last cigarette. "Don't get used to it."
But he was smiling as he said it.
Outside, London hummed with its usual mix of mundane and magical chaos. Somewhere in the city, other lost souls waited for help that might or might not come. Other children struggled with powers they didn't understand, in families that couldn't or wouldn't help them.
John took a long drag and made a mental note to teach Harry about the broader supernatural community soon. The kid had proven today that he could handle the truth about what was out there. More importantly, he'd proven that he wanted to help.
That was either going to save the world or end it.
Knowing Harry Potter, John thought, it would probably be both.